Thursday, July 1, 2010

Investigations: How Obama Admin Probes Torture

Interesting story here from Mother Jones about a U.S. federal probe into human-rights investigators who managed to track down and snap pics of CIA officers. The photos were taken as part of the legal defence of 9/11 detainees who say they were tortured and need to ID their tormentors in court. Instead of probing the abuse allegations, the Obama administration has gone after the human-rights workers. Nice touch.

Da Biz: Are Investigative Stories and Print Doomed? Uh, No

Print is dying. Investigative reporting is a money-loser. Those seem to be the truisms of the age. And they're perpetrated as much by digital writers as print media managers themselves. But as this New York Times piece on Rolling Stone magazine's recent series of investigative coups shows, those truisms ain't so true after all.
Rolling Stone has reinvented itself in recent years with longer, probing pieces - most recently the feature that ended the career of Team America fan General Stanley McChrystal (wonder what he thought of the sex scenes). And guess what: Its circulation has increased. Especially among digitally minded and supposedly apathetic young readers.

Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Interesting: Double Pulitzer Winner Weingarten Reflects on Writing

Interesting Q&A here with The Washington Post's Gene Weingarten, winner of two Pulitzers, about his writing process. Called by humour writer Dave Barry "brilliant, funny and clinically insane," Weingarten won a Pulitzer for this feature about convincing renowned violinist Joshua Bell to play a $3.5-million Stradivarius for spare change in the DC Metro and a second Pulitzer in April for this story about a family whose baby died after being forgotten in the back seat of a car on a hot summer day - something Weingarten admits he once almost did himself.