Culled from CJR’s frequently updated “Must-reads from around the Web,” our staff recommendations for the best pieces of journalism (and other miscellany) on the Internet, here are your can’t-miss must-reads of the past week:
If it happened there … the government shutdown — American events described using the tropes and tone normally employed by the American media to describe events in other countries
America’s biggest newspapers slam the GOP over shutdown — Even the WSJ had little love for John Boehner and his colleagues
In death of ex-Hasid estranged from her religious children, a mirror for trauma of many — A father reflects on his own efforts to stay close to his children after deciding to live a secular life
Inside the fall of BlackBerry — How the smartphone inventor failed to adapt
Adriane LaFrance analyzed a year of her own reporting for gender bias — This is what she found
NSA gathers data on social networks of US citizens — Since 2010, the National Security Agency has been exploiting its huge collections of data to create sophisticated graphs of some Americans’ social connections that can identify their associates, their locations at certain times, their traveling companions and other personal information
Review of David and Goliath by Malcolm Gladwell — “Malcolm Gladwell too often presents as proven laws what are just intriguing possibilities and musings about human behavior”
The Editors are the staffers of the Columbia Journalism Review.