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:
A letter to Paul Wolfowitz — Occasioned by the tenth anniversary of the Iraq War
On Wednesday, Atlantic blogger Ta-Nehisi Coates ate a bad nut on the train to Boston and went into anaphylactic shock — “America, whatever its flaws, is very often amazing in its efficiency and compassion. It did not escape my mind that in some other place I might have died”
The Steubenville rape case — Social media on trial
The glory days of American journalism are right now — Ignore the doomsayers: The news-reading public has never had more and better information at their fingertips
The state of the news media 2013 — An annual report on American journalism from the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism
How the Boston Phoenix kept its readers but lost its advertisers — What did in the Phoenix was the decline of community
Food stamps put Rhode Island town on monthly boom-and-bust cycle — Three years into an economic recovery, this is the lasting scar of collapse: a federal program that began as a last resort for a few million hungry people has grown into an economic lifeline for entire towns
‘To be sure’ — A list of cliches to avoid
Evolution of feathers — The long curious extravagant evolution of feathers
The Editors are the staffers of the Columbia Journalism Review.