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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:
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- Richard Reeves: A Life in Institutions
- Jake Adelstein: The Reporter Who Became His Story
- Jim Goad (1961-2026)
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- 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
- Strange Bedfellows in the Academy: Alliance Theory and the Straussian Schism
- Tournier on Desmond Ford
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- Tournier on Luke Ford
- Tournier on The Nostradamus Kid
- An Alliance Theory of Antisemitism
- Tournier on Cinema Paradiso and Desmond Ford
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 Not Boring Hero System
Packy McCormick (b. 1987) spent a day writing trivia questions and building slides for the first night of a club he wanted to start. Seven people came. He stood in the room with a Duke degree behind him and an … Continue reading
Posted in Journalism, San Jose
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Zero Percent Noise
Casey Newton (b. 1980) keeps a Signal handle in his bio, and the bio names the man before the prose does. Founder and editor of Platformer. Co-host of Hard Fork. The newsletter runs on Ghost now. He moved it off … Continue reading
Posted in Journalism
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The Patron Saint of Lost Causes: Gustavo Arellano’s Hero System
In the last week of March 2026, the phones in Latino Los Angeles went quiet. Gustavo Arellano (b. 1979) noticed it first as a pattern of small refusals. Men he had known for years stopped returning his texts. Organizations canceled … Continue reading
Posted in Journalism, Los Angeles
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The Hero System of Los Angeles Times Columnist Steve Lopez
Steve Lopez (b. 1953) keeps a private appointment with the obituary page. He has described the moment a newspaperman dreads, when the names there stop belonging to strangers and start belonging to men he knew, men he stood beside at … Continue reading
Posted in Journalism, Los Angeles, Los Angeles Times
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The Hero System of San Francisco Chronicle’s Ace Investigative Journalists
The database does not care who reads it. Susie Neilson sat at her desk at the San Francisco Chronicle and worked through LexisNexis CourtLink, a repository of court filings, and found a lawsuit that gave her pause. She had read … Continue reading
Posted in Journalism, San Francisco
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The Hero System of San Francisco Columnist Emily Hoeven
For years a man carried a machete through Jefferson Square Park. The police logged about fifty encounters with him after 2014. Two restraining orders. Cycles of jail, treatment, release, the same park, the same blade. The neighbors waited for the … Continue reading
Posted in Journalism, San Francisco
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The Friend with the Microphone
The studio on Mariposa Street holds the quiet of a place built for sound. Ericka Cruz Guevarra puts on the headphones. The board glows. She leans toward the microphone and starts the way she starts three mornings a week, with … Continue reading
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The Man Who Went There: George Packer’s Hero System
He waits before he answers. The stage at the 92nd Street Y holds two chairs, a low table, a glass of water he does not touch. The crowd came in from the Upper West Side, canvas totes and reading glasses, … Continue reading
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The Fair Witness: Evan Osnos and the Hero System of the Even Voice
NPR, a morning in the spring of 2025. Steve Inskeep asks Evan Osnos (b. 1976) whether he understands what passed between Donald Trump (b. 1946) and Xi Jinping (b. 1953). Osnos does not reach for the answer a host wants. … Continue reading
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The Hero System of WSJ Editor Emma Tucker
Stand in the Journal newsroom an hour before the page closes and watch the life cycle of a scoop. A reporter has something no one else has. An OpenAI deal, a hospital chain in the Justice Department’s sights, a number … Continue reading
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