Second Read
Home truths
For the essayist Albert Murray, the South was a state of mind
By James Marcus May 1, 2013 at 12:00 AM
There is nothing quite so liberating for a journalist as failing to carry out an assignment. I'm not talking... More
Gorky peek
The Second Russian Revolution gave viewers an unprecedented glimpse inside a rapidly liberalizing Soviet Union
By Ann Cooper Mar 1, 2013 at 12:00 AM
In the spring of 1989, after decades of being kept out in the cold by Communist secrecy and propaganda,... More
A beautiful mind
In Is There No Place on Earth for Me?, Susan Sheehan told the complete story of one woman’s struggles with schizophrenia
By Jennifer Gonnerman Jan 2, 2013 at 12:00 AM
There were times when the lobby of The Village Voice seemed to be a magnet for crazy people. When... More
Human capital
In O Albany!, William Kennedy pays homage to the hard-to-love city that is his novels’ greatest hero
By Stefan Beck Nov 1, 2012 at 12:00 AM
On January 16, 1928, William Joseph Kennedy suffered a misfortune of birth only slightly preferable to bastardy. Having drawn... More
Rocky Mountain fever
Gene Fowler’s Timber Line celebrates the chicanery and showmanship of the original Denver Post
By Justin Peters Sep 17, 2012 at 10:50 AM
In the winter of 1907, Denver showed the rest of the nation how to fight a newspaper war. The... More
Look back on anger
At his best, Ambrose Bierce used vicious satire to puncture the smug complacency of America’s Gilded Age
By Bill Marx Jul 30, 2012 at 11:10 AM
s journalist, short-story writer, and poet Ambrose Bierce one of the biggest SOBs in American literature? He is certainly... More
Laboratory confidential
The Double Helix’s warts-and-all portrayal of scientific pursuits shook up the formal world of science writing
By Jonathan Weiner May 10, 2012 at 06:50 AM
hen The Double Helix appeared in the winter of 1968, I reviewed it for The Laureate, the literary magazine... More
The Auteurs’ Caretaker
Penelope Gilliatt didn’t care about movies as much as she cared about the people who made them
By Bethlehem Shoals Mar 22, 2012 at 06:00 AM
n 1968, New Yorker editor William Shawn decided to start taking the movies seriously. Up to that point, the... More
The Road Book
Before Ernie Pyle went to war, he wrote about America
By Kevin Coyne Jan 18, 2012 at 06:00 AM
n the spring of 1932, Ernie Pyle took over as the new managing editor of The Washington Daily News,... More
How the Past Saw the Present
The future of journalism has always been on journalism’s mind
By Megan Garber Nov 11, 2011 at 06:00 AM
JR knew about the iPad a good fifteen years before there was an iPad to know about. In a... More
Among the Mongers
Henry Mayhew and the pursuit of history, from the bottom up
By Jeffrey Greggs Aug 24, 2011 at 02:44 PM
here is no place in any era more evocative of soot, steam, gruel, and misery than Victorian London. It... More
Punk’s Prophet
Greil Marcus’s seminal work Ranters and Crowd Pleasers: Punk in Pop Music, 1977-92
By Tim Marchman Jul 25, 2011 at 06:00 AM
iscounting cash-in reunions, studio sessions with bank robber Ronnie Biggs, and the like, The Sex Pistols last played in... More
The Paper Chase
For tabloid king Emile Gauvreau, it took a lifetime to slow down
By Michael Shapiro May 6, 2011 at 09:00 AM
ears later, when he recounted the events that would lead to his becoming the most sensational, shameless, ambitious, and... More
Not for Laughs
A pathbreaking look at the dark comic genius behind “Skippy”
By David Hajdu Mar 15, 2011 at 06:00 AM
ll cartoonists are geniuses,” wrote John Updike in his introduction to a collection of cartoons by Arnold Roth, a... More
Her Great Depression
Re-reading Betty MacDonald’s Anybody Can Do Anything, on the Northwest’s bust years
By Claire Dederer Jan 20, 2011 at 10:00 AM
rom the time I was nine or ten, I carried a spiral-bound Mead notebook with me at all times. I... More
‘See you on the other side’ - Meet Jessica Lum, a terminally ill 25-year-old who chose to spend what little time she had practicing journalism
#Realtalk: This is the best moment to be in journalism - The old stuff isn’t coming back, but that’s okay
Streams of consciousness - Millennials expect a steady diet of quick-hit, social-media-mediated bits and bytes. What does that mean for journalism?
Sticking with the truth - How ‘balanced’ coverage helped sustain the bogus claim that childhood vaccines can cause autism
An ink-stained stretch - Can Aaron Kushner save the Orange County Register—and the newspaper industry?
What to do if you find a baby bird
Expert advice
Inside Google’s secret lab
We might deplore the practice, but posting pictures of our food online is a way to bring everyone to the table
How the ‘World’s 50 Best’ list changed the way elite restaurants do business
“Every time the restaurant switched up its format, it got plenty of accompanying media coverage that let judges know they needed to return to see what was going on”
CJR's Guide to Online News Startups
Uptown Messenger – Hyperlocal news for a neighborhood in New Orleans
Who Owns What
The Business of Digital Journalism
A report from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism
Questions and exercises for journalism students.
