Mark Obbie's Blog, page 39

Murder porn

Yet more proof that satire can drive home a point more effectively than most other commentary: this week’s episode of South Park, in which the kids, fearing violence, block their parents’ obsessive viewing of true-crime shows that sexualize crime. Because … Continue reading →

Just a summary, or real reporting?

It’s rare that a magazine feature or book tells a completely original story. In most cases, newspaper reporters got there first and broke many stories. Usually that’s how magazine writers and book authors learn of the best potential stories. Then, … Continue reading →

Why not newsletters?

A provocative post today on the ever-informative Sentencing Law and Policy blog, by Ohio State law professor Doug Berman, features comments sent to Berman by Harvard’s Nancy Gertner, a former federal district judge. I’m interested in the substance of it … Continue reading →

The other Tim

When I first read about a local murder case, in which Rochester Institute of Technology professor Tim Wells killed his wife, I found striking parallels to the murder defendant Tim Ginocchetti, whose story I told in God’s Nobodies. Now that I … Continue reading →

Son of “Snowfall”

If “Snowfall,” The New York Times‘ sports desk’s premier storytelling innovation of 2012, got too much attention — and there’s little doubt about that, no matter that it was a good yarn — then the latest sign of literary life from … Continue reading →

Remembrance of crimes past

I’m a little late to this piece from The Washington Post‘s Paul Farhi last week, but it deserves some attention, given my interest in how we as a society (including but not just journalists) respond to mass shootings. Farhi marvels … Continue reading →

A criminal-justice journalism manifesto

A significant, new report at Nieman Reports by Dan Froomkin is a must-read for cops and courts reporters — or criminal-justice-policy reporters, to the extent there are any left to till those journalistic fields. The dearth of such reporters is … Continue reading →

ABC goes to Graceland

Whatever possessed ABC’s Good Morning America to pair its thoughtful legal analyst-reporter Dan Abrams with HLN’s never-thoughtful Nancy Grace, it backfired badly in the talk segment that appears after a straightforward news report on an upstate New York murder case. … Continue reading →

Anatomy of a teen nightmare

Nina Burleigh’s devastatingly effective new narrative in the Sept. 26 edition of Rolling Stone succeeds because it takes problems and concepts we think we know all about — sexting, rape, bullying, social media, blackout drinking, and suicide among teens — … Continue reading →

Behind the shouting, some facts

Whatever may come of our latest policy debate following yet another mass shooting — and, of course, opponents wasted no time in shouting past each other about guns and mental illness — we can thank our leading newspapers for injecting … Continue reading →