Mark Obbie's Blog, page 42
August 1, 2013
A nature story
Invariably the stories I write concern tragedy, violence, unhappy people, disagreements (to say the least), and general mayhem. I chose this writing life. But neither man nor woman can live by true crime or other law and justice stories alone. … Continue reading →
July 31, 2013
Why I wrote about my town’s tragedy
Some local press for my Pacific Standard cover story, which I blogged about here. Messenger Post newspapers, publisher of the daily in the town where I live (Canandaigua) and a weekly in the town where the Christmas Eve mass shooting … Continue reading →
July 29, 2013
Did I say “the end”? I meant end-ish
Noam Scheiber and The New Republic have answered critics of his recent cover story, including me (I attract his sharpest barb for posing a supposedly “cartoonish” version of one part of his argument). In the response to the responses, he … Continue reading →
July 28, 2013
Hive mind ain’t journalism
In his thoughtful and revealing reported feature in today’s New York Times Magazine titled (in print) “Crowd-Sourcing a Smear,” writer Jay Caspian Kang makes the case that we cannot blame a platform — be it Redditt, or all of the … Continue reading →
July 26, 2013
A killer ego
Writing about killers, where they came from and what motivated them, without feeding their need for notoriety and inspiring others poses a terrible dilemma. Some solve it with a simplistic insistence that we ignore the killers’ stories; treat them as … Continue reading →
July 24, 2013
I saw what you did there
If, after a nine-year absence from writing about the business of law, I can recognize a story is old news, then it must be old news. That realization, and an offhand comment I made on Dahlia Lithwick’s Facebook page, led … Continue reading →
July 19, 2013
“All this for a whore”
In his new true-crime book Lost Girls: An Unsolved American Mystery, New York magazine’s Robert Kolker sets for himself as a writer the same challenge he makes in his book to police and society at large: Can we treat prostitutes … Continue reading →
July 18, 2013
Is it just the cover?
One of the toughest challenges magazine editors, writers, and designers face is to imagine ourselves as a reader or newsstand browser. The reader happens upon our work and immediately forms an impression with no information other than what’s obvious on … Continue reading →
July 17, 2013
God’s Nobodies, now in audio
My Kindle Single God’s Nobodies is now available as an audio book, available here. Audible.com, the publisher and producer of the audio, charges $6.95 for a one-off purchase of it, which is of course much more than the text e-single … Continue reading →
The post God’s Nobodies, now in audio appeared first on Mark Obbie: Journalist.
July 14, 2013
Zimmerman verdict and true justice
My instinct, after news like the George Zimmerman acquittal in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, is to hope that skilled journalists dig deeply into what just happened and, after weeks and months of hard reporting, tell the real story in … Continue reading →
The post Zimmerman verdict and true justice appeared first on Mark Obbie: Journalist.
