These are the stories we’re watching this week. Here is your Weekly Wire: Jimmy Breslin, the longtime newspaper columnist, novelist, and self-described “street reporter,” died Sunday at his Manhattan home. He was 88. Breslin was writing about humans of New York before Humans of New York, and typically chased the atypical story. In 1963, he… Continue reading March 21st: The Death of Jimmy Breslin, Slate Staff Votes to Unionize, and more
Category: Spring 2017
Kathryn Schulz’s “When Things Go Missing”
The RRJ recommends you read “When Things Go Missing” by Kathryn Schulz, from the Feb. 13, 2017 issue of The New Yorker. At Toronto’s York Mills subway station a few weeks ago, waiting for the bus driver to come back from wherever bus drivers go when they’re not glowering at you, I took the latest issue of… Continue reading Kathryn Schulz’s “When Things Go Missing”
A Public Peek Into Trump’s Taxes
Hed: (n) Newsroom jargon for headlines Headlines are tricky. They have to grab flighty readers’ attention, tell a story, and hopefully even squeeze in a witticism. The smallest choices affect readers’ first impressions and, sometimes, their only take on the story. Once a week, we analyze the different ways news outlets present the same story.… Continue reading A Public Peek Into Trump’s Taxes
March 13th: Even More Postmedia Layoffs, Vault 7, and more
These are the stories we’re watching this week. Here is your Weekly Wire: Postmedia announced last week it will lay off 54 employees from its Pacific Newspaper Group, which includes the Vancouver Sun and Province. The layoffs are the second phase of Postmedia’s most recent round of salary cuts, the first of which saw 38 PNG staffers… Continue reading March 13th: Even More Postmedia Layoffs, Vault 7, and more
Alison Motluk’s “Uncommon Ancestry”
The best health stories are about empathy, about seeing clearly that all that separates you, the reader, from the story’s subject is an accident or genetics. Alison Motluk’s “Uncommon Ancestry” in Hazlitt is gripping not only because of the inherent drama of its premise—that there are many existing cases where fertility doctors impregnated patients with their… Continue reading Alison Motluk’s “Uncommon Ancestry”