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"Luke Ford reports all of the 'juicy' quotes, and has been doing it for years." (Marc B. Shapiro)
"This guy knows all the gossip, the ins and outs, the lashon hara of the Orthodox world. He’s an [expert] in... all the inner workings of the Orthodox world." (Rabbi Aaron Rakeffet-Rothkoff) LATEST POSTS:
- Robert Putnam: The Man Who Counted What America Lost
- W. Bradford Wilcox: The Sociologist Who Tells America to Get Married
- Peter Moskos: The Cop Who Talks to People
- Julius Krein
- Ryan Burge: The Numbers Man in the Empty Church
- Emily Oster: The Economist in the Delivery Room
- The Most Ridiculous Story Ever Told
- Tanner Greer
- Economist Tyler Cowen
- Richard Reeves: A Life in Institutions
- Jake Adelstein: The Reporter Who Became His Story
- Jim Goad (1961-2026)
- Moira Greyland
- Robert Oscar Lopez: The Inconvenient Witness
- Two Ledgers: Decoding the Gurus and the Price of Talk
- The Pervert’s Progress: Costin Vlad Alamariu and the Making of Bronze Age Pervert
- Curtis Yarvin: A Life Against Democracy
- Mark Helprin: Against the Current
- Mark Brandt: The Man Who Asked Who Else Is Prejudiced
- John T. Jost: The Psychologist of Acquiescence
BEST POSTS:
- * The Enlightenment Wasn’t Enlightened (6-23-26)
* Mr. Burge Draws The Line (6-23-26)
* 'Improving on Democracy' (6-17-26)
* People Leak To People Who Are Fun (6-11-26)
* Why Does Australia Produce So Many Great Journalists? (6-11-26)
* Steve Wynn and the Press: Power, Litigation, and the Contest Over Las Vegas (6-3-26)
* Sheldon Adelson and the Journalists (6-3-26)
* The Vigilant Animal: Thinkers Who Reject the Myth of Human Gullibility (6-2-26)
* The Cost of Refusing the Misunderstanding Myth (6-2-26)
* Show Me How It Travels (6-2-26)
* The Norm Explainers (6-2-26)
* Centering Marginalized Voices (6-1-26)
* What would it look like if the Washington Post put its reader first? (6-1-26)
* What would it look like if the Financial Times put its reader first? (6-1-26)
* What It Would Mean for the Los Angeles Times to Put the Reader First? (6-1-26)
* What It Would Mean for The New York Times to Put the Reader First? (6-1-26)
* Why Wembanyama Lives on the Perimeter (5-31-26)
* The Emotional Palettes Of San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco & Sacramento (5-27-26)
* The Administrative Capital: Sacramento Legal Culture (5-27-26)
* San Diego - The Quiet Republic (5-27-26)
* The Quiet Bar: San Diego Legal Culture (5-27-26)
* SF v LA Legal Culture (5-27-26)
* Why Talent Travels Poorly Between San Francisco and Los Angeles (5-27-26)
* San Francisco and Los Angeles as Rival Models of Urban Access (5-27-26)
* Social Cliques in New York, 2026 (5-25-26)
* Social Cliques in San Francisco, 2026 (5-25-26)
* The Rival Courts of Washington (5-25-26)
* The City of Private Rooms (5-25-26)
Category Archives: Journalism
Paul Pringle and the Sociology of Institutional Self-Protection
Paul Pringle (b. 1956) investigates the hidden administrative logic of powerful institutions. Across decades he studied how universities, municipal governments, unions, police agencies, child welfare bureaucracies, and media organizations shield themselves from scrutiny while presenting an image of civic legitimacy. … Continue reading
Posted in Journalism, Los Angeles, Los Angeles Times, USC
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Dennis McDougal: Dynasties, Monopolies, and Murder
Dennis McDougal (1947-2025) belonged to a generation of Southern California reporters who treated Los Angeles as a machinery of power rather than a fantasy capital. He read the city through its newspapers, studios, police departments, political dynasties, organized crime, labor … Continue reading
Posted in Dennis McDougal, Journalism, Long Beach, Los Angeles, Los Angeles Times
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The Leaderboard: David Lat and the Prestige Economy of American Law
Blogger attorney David Lat (b. 1975) has interpreted American elite legal culture during its passage from the print era into the fragmented digital prestige economy of the twenty-first century. His career sits at the meeting point of several institutional systems … Continue reading
Posted in Journalism, Law
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Kevin Roderick and the Passage from Newspaper City to Platform City
Kevin Roderick (b. 1953) belongs to the transitional generation of American metropolitan journalists who carried the institutional habits of twentieth-century newspaper work into the fragmented digital order that emerged after 2000. His career tracks three developments at once: the decline … Continue reading
Posted in Journalism, Los Angeles, Los Angeles Times
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Amy Wallace and the Migration of Elite Journalists
Amy Wallace (b. 1962) belongs to the generation of American long-form journalists who came up through the metropolitan newspaper system, moved into the prestige magazine world, and later turned to collaborative nonfiction. Her career traces a larger shift in American … Continue reading
Posted in Abuse, Hollywood, Journalism, Los Angeles, Nikki Finke
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War as Organization: The Historical Vision of Rick Atkinson
Rick Atkinson (b. 1952) writes narrative military history for a mass readership without surrendering archival depth. He came up inside the institutional culture of American newspaper journalism and carried its documentary habits into the writing of history. His books reconstruct … Continue reading
Posted in Journalism
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True Defamation
Philosophy professor, attorney, and former journalist Jeff Helmreich (son of the late sociologist William B. Helmreich) writes in 2024: Holy Land was a thriving grocery chain in Minneapolis, owned and operated by a Palestinian American family. One of them, the … Continue reading
Posted in Journalism
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Joseph Sobran and the Fragmentation of American Conservatism
Joseph Sobran (1946-2010) holds a singular place in the intellectual history of postwar American conservatism. He rose as a stylist of the first rank within the movement’s flagship press and ended as an exile from nearly every faction that had … Continue reading
Posted in Journalism
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Adam Davidson and the Narrative Reconstruction of Economic Journalism
Adam Davidson (b. 1970) belongs to the generation of American journalists who rebuilt public economic explanation after the financial crisis of 2008. He produced no original economic theory and practiced no technical financial reporting. His contribution lies in narrative form. … Continue reading
Posted in Economics, Journalism
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From Danger Room to Rolling Stone: Noah Shachtman and the Digital Transformation of the American Newsroom
Noah Shachtman (b. 1977) belongs to the cohort of American journalists formed during the passage from the industrial newspaper to the networked information economy. His career tracks the rise of online national security reporting after 9/11 and the wider erosion … Continue reading
Posted in Journalism
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