Great Reads & Reporting

Goodfellas was a breakthtrough film for many creatives, but in a lesser-known story, it was a turning point for steadycam: A device which revolutionized the technique of filmmaking as much as drones may yet. This is a Q&A with one of the pioneers, and how he made one of film’s most iconic sequences.

This is flat-out great reporting, the kind of narrative you would expect in the book published a year later, all the more extraordinary because it was written in real time because now, even for a newspaper, there is a deadline every minute.

The Washington Post’s Ed O’Keefe had no advantage over any other reporter covering the finalé to at least this act in the healthcare drama. He’s up in the gallery, observing, along with everyone else.

This was Scaramucci’s first official day on the job at the Trump White House as — Communications Director. He was not a stranger to the media in this role, however: The Mooch hijacked the daily press briefing on the day his appointment had been announced the week before, and was all over the Sunday talk shows.

But this outreach — as author Ryan Lizza notes, neither off the record or on background — is laced with profanity, personal attacks, factual errors and almost certainly false bravado. It reads like an interview with someone in desperate need of comms advice he has ignored or not sought, not one from someone who holds perhaps the most sensitive and coveted comms roles in the world.

Lt. Heather “Lucky” Penny was one of two — count’em two — US fighter pilots available in the moments after the 9/11 attacks to ... do anything. In the hands of a lesser journalist, this could have been sensational in the worst sense of the word. Instead, it’s sensational.

One amazing thing to know that you wouldn’t if you didn’t look at the slideshow and read the captions carefully, without giving too much away: Penny’s father was a Delta Airlines pilot.

Now, get our your handkerchief.

A friend and colleague from Wired, who is simply one of the best writers around. This was a very personal piece which Tessa bravely re-shared when — this isn’t a spoiler — she called off her wedding many months later.

Felix Salmon is a massively influential writer, creating standards and publicly holding others accountable to them— especially the publications for which he worked. But Salmon is also an essayist in the classic sense, a master of the long form.

I know nothing and care nothing for the 1% world of fine dining, but in this piece Salmon wrote for Reuters makes you care as he fearlessly schools a star chef and a sycophantic New York Times food critic in defense of a no name diner.

Every David Letterman fan knows who Tony Mendez was. But his story — and the story of cue cards — is utterly fascinating.

I started reading this because I had occasion once to see Jimmy Webb in his native environment. But, like so many New Yorker pieces, this tells you more than you could possibly have imagined you’d ever want to know about a subject — in this case retailing — that you couldn’t have cared less about. Until ...

One of the great ledes, if and when you know how to do it. When journalists can get personal (and can write), this is what happens.

Great political reporting and writing of a moment — and it was a moment — that in lesser hands might have even escaped notice.

This opened my eyes to my own experience, as an eight-year-old, who also roamed freely in a way that seemingly overnight changed. The effect this shift has on young minds, this article argues, is enormously unfortunate.