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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
The Unwritten Canon: American Murder and the Books That Were Not Written
Black-on-Black crime gets almost no long-form prestige treatment outside one acceptable frame blaming white people. David Simon (b. 1960) wrote
Posted in Blacks, Crime, Journalism
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The Age of Monkeypox
You’d think that the persistence of gay orgies during the 2022 monkeypox outbreak would make a fascinating subject for honest reporting. It got almost none. Monkeypox broke out in May 2022. The disease spread primarily through sexual contact among men … Continue reading
Posted in Homosexuality, Journalism
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Neil Strauss and the Literature of Self-Construction
Neil Darrow Strauss (b. 1969) is an American journalist, memoirist, and ghostwriter whose career traces the migration of literary nonfiction from institutional gatekeeping toward personality-driven narrative production. Born in Chicago and educated at Vassar College, he entered the music press … Continue reading
Posted in Crime, Journalism, Neil Strauss
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Vanessa Grigoriadis: Chronicler of Elite American Culture in Transition
Vanessa Grigoriadis (b. 1973) belongs to the last cohort of American long-form magazine journalists trained inside the prestige print system before its collapse. She was born in New York City to Greek-American parents. Her father taught computer science at Rutgers. … Continue reading
Posted in Journalism
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Taffy Brodesser-Akner: Jewish Money, Jewish Memory, and Jewish America
Taffy Brodesser-Akner (b. 1975) was born Stephanie Akner in New York City and raised in an Orthodox Jewish home in Brooklyn. Her father taught computer science at NYU; her mother graduated from what is now the Stern School of Business. … Continue reading
Posted in Jews, Journalism
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The Permanent Outsider: Michael Tracey and the Journalism of Procedural Skepticism
Michael Tracey (b. 1988) belongs to a generation of American journalists shaped less by the institutional culture of metropolitan newspapers than by the fragmentation of digital media after the Iraq War and the 2008 financial crisis. Raised in West Caldwell, … Continue reading
Posted in Journalism, Michael Tracey
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NYT: What Are ‘Teen Takeovers’ and Why Are Police Struggling to Stop Them?
The New York Times says: “Across the country, police and city officials are trying to crack down on sometimes violent youth gatherings, but the teens themselves say they need some way to socialize and blow off steam.” Steve Sailer writes: … Continue reading
Posted in Blacks, Journalism
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The Priest and the Larrikin
Rory Sutherland posts on X: “Americans still like to believe that journalists are a kind of priestly caste, with a higher calling; in Britain they have traditionally been seen as disfunctional larrikins; mischievous, shit-stirring chancers, somewhat beneath the salt. Depictions … Continue reading
Posted in Journalism
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Brian Stelter: ‘An extraordinary moment for America’s media elite is all too ordinary in America’
CNN’s media correspondent writes: What happened at the Washington Hilton on Saturday night might have seemed extraordinary because President Trump and so many people in the presidential line of succession were in the ballroom when shots were fired outside. But … Continue reading
Posted in Journalism
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The MSM Has An Anti-AI Bias
Journalism’s coalition depends on a scarce commodity: the byline, the synthesis, the access. Social media broke the distribution monopoly. AI breaks the synthesis monopoly. A reporter who explains what a study says now competes with a chatbot that explains it … Continue reading
Posted in AI, Journalism
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