Topic: The best long-read stories (long-form journalism).

[CornerFlag]

In a time where journalism is often seen as something to fit the short attention spans of the modern reader, it's always somewhat heartening for myself to find long-read stories that, for me, signify that the story-telling of the true journalist isn't lost.  I've read a few over time but one I read today about the discovery of the WWII US aircraft carrier the USS Wasp just kind of made me realise how much I enjoy reading these, so I thought it'd make for a good thread here.  I'd encourage everyone who contributes to maybe just post the first couple/few paragraphs and then use the original link so the site gets the hits it deserves.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/13/magazine/uss-wasp-lost-world-war-ii-aircraft-carrier.html

On July 1, 1942, the U.S.S. Wasp, an aircraft carrier holding 71 planes, 2,247 sailors and a journalist, sailed from San Diego to the western Pacific to join the battle against the Japanese. On board was a naval officer named Lt. Cmdr. John Joseph Shea. Two days before he left San Diego, Shea wrote his 5-year-old son a letter.

Dear Jackie,

This is the first letter I have ever written directly to my little son and I am thrilled to know that you can read it all by yourself. If you miss some of the words, I am sure it will be because I do not write very plainly. Mother will help you in that case I am sure.

I was certainly glad to hear your voice over the long-distance telephone. It sounded as though I were right in the living room with you. You sounded as though you missed your daddy very much. I miss you too, more than anyone will ever know. It is too bad this war could not have been delayed a few more years so that I could grow up again with you and do with you all the things I planned to do when you were old enough to go to school.

I thought how nice it would be for me to come home early in the afternoon and play ball with you, and go mountain-climbing and see the trees, and brooks, and learn all about woodcraft, hunting, fishing, swimming and things like that. I suppose we must be brave and put these things off for a little while.

When you are a little bigger you will know why your daddy is not home so much any more. You know we have a big country and we have ideals as to how people should live and enjoy the riches of it and how each is born with equal rights to life, freedom and the pursuit of happiness. Unfortunately, there are some countries in the world where they don’t have these ideals, where a boy cannot grow up to be what he wants to be with no limits on his opportunities to be a great man, such as a great priest, statesman, doctor, soldier, business man etc.

Because there are people and countries who want to change our nation, its ideals, forms of government and way of life, we must leave our homes and families to fight. Fighting for the defense of our country, ideals, homes and honor is an honor and a duty which your daddy has to do before he can come home to settle down with you and Mother. When it is done, he is coming home to be with you always and forever. So wait just a little while longer. I am afraid it will be more than the two weeks you told me on the phone.

In the meantime, take good care of Mother. Be a good boy and grow up to be a good young man. Study hard when you go to school. Be a leader in everything good in life. Be a good Catholic, and you can’t help being a good American. Play fair always. Strive to win but if you must lose, lose like a gentleman and a good sportsman. Don’t ever be a quitter either in sports or in your business or profession when you grow up. Get all the education you can. Stay close to Mother and follow her advice. Obey her in everything, no matter how you may at times disagree. She knows what is best and will never let you down or lead you away from the right and honorable things in life. If I don’t get back, you will have to be Mother’s protector because you will be the only one she has. You must grow up to take my place as well as your own in her life and heart. Don’t let her brood over me nor waste herself on anyone not worthy of her or you.

Love your grandmother and granddad as long as they live. They, too, will never let you down. Love your aunts and see them as often as you can. Last of all, don’t ever forget your daddy. Pray for him to come back and if it is God’s will that he does not, be the kind of a boy and man your daddy wants you to be.

Thanks for the nice sweater and handkerchiefs and particularly for the note and card. Write me very often and tell me everything.

Kiss Mother for me every night.

Goodbye for now.

With all my love and devotion for Mother and you,

Your daddy

On the afternoon of Sept. 15, the Wasp was in the Coral Sea, escorting a convoy of United States Marines bound for Guadalcanal, in the Solomon Islands, when it was hit by torpedoes fired at close range by a Japanese submarine. Explosions immediately rocked the ship. Many men were killed instantly. The ship’s magazines and fuel stores detonated like bombs. The hangar deck, where most of the planes were stored, was soon entirely ablaze. At the same time, water rushed into the breaches in the ship’s hull, and the Wasp lurched 15 degrees to its starboard side, like a boxer buckling at the knee after a body shot.

The commanding officer of the Wasp, Capt. Forrest P. Sherman, swung the ship around, so that the flames and smoke blew toward the ocean rather than across the deck, but it made no difference. More than 300 feet of his ship, from the bow to the central “island” containing the bridge, was subsumed by an uncontrollable inferno. Within minutes, the Wasp had become a vision of hell.

[GreatEx]

This is why I love the NYT and New Yorker magazine, they do the investigative and long-form journalism better than any.

[Zeb]

OCCRP do some incredible reporting. There is a set of longform interlinked reports on the link.

In late February 2018, Jan Kuciak, a young Slovak investigative journalist, was murdered by a single bullet. His fiancée was killed alongside him.

Before his death, Kuciak had been working with the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and his outlet, Aktuality.sk, on an in-depth investigation about the Italian ‘Ndrangheta, one of the world’s most powerful and fearsome criminal groups, and their infiltration into his country.

His reporting — now forever unfinished — was carried out in collaboration with two OCCRP partners: the Czech Center for Investigative Journalism (CCIJ) and the Investigative Reporting Project Italy (IRPI).

Jan’s final stories, published to honor his memory, set the record straight, and minimize the danger to his colleagues, appear below.

https://www.occrp.org/en/amurderedjournalistslastinvestigation/

[kennedy81]

Some great pieces in the Atlantic recently. This one takes a look at the roots of white nationalism in the U.S.

White Nationalism’s Deep American Roots by Adam Serwer, April 2019 issue.

A long-overdue excavation of the book that Hitler called his “bible,” and the man who wrote it


..The concept of “white genocide”—extinction under an onslaught of genetically or culturally inferior nonwhite interlopers—may indeed seem like a fringe conspiracy theory with an alien lineage, the province of neo-Nazis and their fellow travelers. In popular memory, it’s a vestige of a racist ideology that the Greatest Generation did its best to scour from the Earth. History, though, tells a different story. King’s recent question, posed in a New York Times interview, may be appalling: “White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization—how did that language become offensive?” But it is apt. “That language” has an American past in need of excavation. Without such an effort, we may fail to appreciate the tenacity of the dogma it expresses, and the difficulty of eradicating it. The president’s rhetoric about “shithole countries” and “invasion” by immigrants invites dismissal as crude talk, but behind it lie ideas whose power should not be underestimated...

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/04/adam-serwer-madison-grant-white-nationalism/583258/

[Zeb]

Politico's done a dive into Brexit which I thought was a good peek at behind the scenes of the negotiations to date.

https://www.politico.eu/article/how-uk-lost-brexit-eu-negotiation/amp/

The European Union set the train in motion before the result of the Brexit referendum had even been announced.

It was at 6:22 a.m. on June 24, 2016 — 59 minutes before the official tally was unveiled — that the European Council sent its first “lines to take” to the national governments that make up the EU.

The United Kingdom was leaving the European Union and Brussels was determined to seize control of the process.

In the short five-paragraph document written by Council President Donald Tusk’s chief of staff, Piotr Serafin, and circulated among EU ambassadors, the bloc’s remaining 27 national governments were urged to speak with one voice and to insist that the U.K. leave through the Article 50 process set down in EU law.

This meant settling the divorce first and the future relationship second, once the U.K. had left. “In the future we hope to have the U.K. as a close partner of the EU,” the document read. “First we need to agree the arrangements for the withdrawal.”

This was crucial. It ran counter to declarations by the U.K.’s victorious Vote Leave campaign not to be bound by the formal exit procedure. If the U.K. agreed to the terms of its departure before its future relationship was settled, the Brexit campaigners had argued, it would deprive itself of much of its leverage.

“Taking back control is a careful change, not a sudden stop,” read the official Brexit campaign’s prospectus — endorsed by two of the political leaders of the campaign, then Justice Secretary Fuckwitted Pob lookalike Michael Gove and the former mayor of London, Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson. “We will negotiate the terms of a new deal before we start any legal process to leave.”

It would be the first of many battles the EU declared, and the first of many it would win, as it stuck to the strategies it laid out in the earliest days of the Brexit process.

Over the 33 months since the referendum, British officials would stage a series of unsuccessful stands, trying to dislodge the EU from its chosen course before grudgingly — and often bitterly — acquiescing amid howls of pain in Westminster.

[classycarra]

Thanks for this thread, great idea.

I still remember being on holiday in NY visiting a friend some time in 2010, and there was a New Yorker lying around. There was an article about a big murder trial that must have been about 20 pages long. It was incredible. Will see if I can fish it out (it's obviously not pertinent or timely, just a great bit of journalism)

[GreatEx]

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/03/27/the-reclusive-hedge-fund-tycoon-behind-the-trump-presidency

Almost 2 years old but worth a read: the money men and women behind Trump and the alt-right surge. If you can read it and not want people killed you're a better person than me.

[CornerFlag]

There's been some great stuff in here, nice work!

This one's from Wired, if you're not subscribed then you only get three articles a month to view but thought this was pretty good, it's a look at those in and around Raqqa who are digging up the mass graves created by ISIS, so it's not a pleasant read but one I think is worth looking at.  There are a couple of images some might not find easy viewing though.

https://www.wired.com/story/body-pullers-syria/

The Body Pullers of Syria by Kenneth Rosen

THE CLOUDS HAVE unzipped their burden onto the earth, but now the rain has stopped and the roads are soggy. The irrigation channels in the pastures overflow with muck. Bayonets of bright green grass peep through the bloated soil. In the distance, the tailpipe of a tractor puffs a scarf of smoke around the edge of the field. Under a patch of trees nearby, a small campfire crackles inside the remains of a clothes dryer.

“Who needs biscuits?” a young man with steely eyes says to a group of roughly a dozen men gathered around the fire. Some are crouching, others kneeling. Some stand and stretch. Eggs boil in a small kettle. Tiny cups of tea pass between big men.

It is about 10 in the morning and the sun peeks through the haze. The fire smolders, and one man walks deeper into xxxxxxxxx. The sound of wood snapping comes from where the man disappeared. He returns and feeds twigs to the fire.

“Hopefully we will finish early today,” mutters Hasan Mohammad. Like most of the men, he is dressed in sturdy navy work clothes and, like most of the men, his speech is muffled by a baby-blue surgical face mask. At his feet several white body bags lie in a row on the dirt path abutting the green grass. The field beyond them is a chaos of choppy heaps of earth that indicate makeshift graves.

Starting in January 2014, Raqqa was the de facto capital of the Islamic State. A Kurdish city in northeastern Syria, Raqqa hugs the banks of Euphrates River, and it was the site of brutal torture filmed by ISIS for propaganda. The area is where journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff are rumored to have been beheaded. For years the city’s residents lived under forced Islamic rule.

Then, in October 2017, the US-led coalition liberated the city from the militants after months of urban warfare throughout the city’s narrow and circuitous streets. By December 2018 more than 165,000 displaced residents had returned to the shell-pocked city. According to US Central Command, air strikes here killed some 1,200 civilians and countless more ISIS fighters. Many of the dead were hastily buried.

Some graves hold a single body; one held close to 1,500. They stipple Raqqa and the surrounding countryside, and as former residents return to their damaged and destroyed homes, the city government is working to exhume and identify the bodies.

The men around this fire have been hired as body pullers, and they have been doing this work for more than a year. Today they’ll work from 8 in the morning until 3 in the afternoon—the winter sun sets early.

...

[BoRed]

Probably preaching to the converted, but still worth a read.

https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2019/jun/06/socialism-for-the-rich-the-evils-of-bad-economics

Summed up in one quote:

Inequality is unlikely to fall much in the future unless our attitudes turn unequivocally against it. Among other things, we will need to accept that how much people earn in the market is often not what they deserve, and that the tax they pay is not taking from what is rightfully theirs.

[BoRed]

Another one from the Guardian today.

The new left economics: how a network of thinkers is transforming capitalism

After decades of rightwing dominance, a transatlantic movement of leftwing economists is building a practical alternative to neoliberalism.

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/jun/25/the-new-left-economics-how-a-network-of-thinkers-is-transforming-capitalism

[Iska]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/extra/KnxBMVGAcn/michigan_central_detroit

I really liked this article on Detroit.  The BBC has developed a nice way of embedding pictures in the piece too.  Quite apart from everything else it covers, the way the US dismantled its rail system defies belief.



Edit: for contrast, this is the main Detroit station today.

[J_Kopite]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/extra/KnxBMVGAcn/michigan_central_detroit

I really liked this article on Detroit.  The BBC has developed a nice way of embedding pictures in the piece too.  Quite apart from everything else it covers, the way the US dismantled its rail system defies belief.

Will read at lunch, cheers for this!

[Jiminy Cricket]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/extra/KnxBMVGAcn/michigan_central_detroit

I really liked this article on Detroit.  The BBC has developed a nice way of embedding pictures in the piece too.  Quite apart from everything else it covers, the way the US dismantled its rail system defies belief.



Edit: for contrast, this is the main Detroit station today.

I'll try to get to that later today. Just flicked through it - you are right about those transitions on the webpage. I've not seen that effect before.

[CornerFlag]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/extra/KnxBMVGAcn/michigan_central_detroit

I really liked this article on Detroit.  The BBC has developed a nice way of embedding pictures in the piece too.  Quite apart from everything else it covers, the way the US dismantled its rail system defies belief.



Edit: for contrast, this is the main Detroit station today.

I've had a long-lasting love for the Michigan Central building, I'm really into disused stuff and how a lot could be brought back to life.  This building is so ridiculously full of potential and it's good to see it being put back into use.  Got to say I'm not convinced that Ford are there for anything other than the tax breaks though.

[Mumm-Ra]

The Beeb has been doing those fancy long-read articles with the pictures for a while now. Look up the ones on Hungerford, and Purple Aki, they are both really good


edit

Actually instead of being lazy, here you go:

Aki:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-6d083913-0bfb-4988-8cd8-d126fa6dcff1

Hungerford:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-sh/hungerford_massacre

[Iska]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/extra/CLQYZENMBI/amazon-data

Another BBC one I enjoyed today, about Amazon.  I’ve got to confess that I still don’t instinctively get the fear over the data mining - I remember a similar if smaller paranoia over debit card records and nobody worries about that now - but the biker guy being sucked in and then undercut shows obvious scope for abuse.