The Sunday Long Read Podcast

There are few couples like Deborah and James Fallows, who have spent more than half a decade talking to people and visiting communities across America to produce "Our Towns," a New York Times bestseller, published last year, and an online series for The Atlantic. They're some of the smartest, most diligent people reporting on the state of the country today and they joined Jacob for a two-in-one SLR podcast to discuss their distinct reporting styles, the power of positive reporting, and the lessons they've learned from their travels. 

1:30: Dayton, Ohio, Moves Forward
6:00: "Our Towns" project with The Atlantic
7:30: Muncie bridges the Town-Gown divide
16:00: "Our Towns" book website
21:00 The Charlie Peters School of Journalism
38:00: Follow Jim and Deb on Twitter

Jessica Contrera covers a wide range of topics as a narrative reporter for the Washington Post and in this week's podcast she chats with Don about her happiest (and saddest) stories, taking care of her mental health while covering traumatic events, and the positive influence a good editor has on a young reporter. Jessica has been featured several times in the Sunday Long Read newsletter and the stories of hers that we've highlighted include a deep dive about sexting teenagers, a piece about the ongoing recovery of mass shooting victims, and a delightful tale about one particularly controversial dog park. 

Episode Links:

Dog Park: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/no-excessive-barking-a-chevy-chase-dog-park-divides-the-rich-and-powerful/2019/08/27/0b9fd242-c4e5-11e9-9986-1fb3e4397be4_story.html

Sexting: https://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/style/2016/09/06/the-sext-was-meant-to-impress-him-instead-it-nearly-destroyed-her/?utm_term=.375aacad9435

Parkland students: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/i-would-rather-not-be-alone-behind-their-anger-florida-students-are-still-teens-struggling-with-trauma/2018/02/20/5e21bb40-1661-11e8-8b08-027a6ccb38eb_story.html

Zach Cruz: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/local/wp/2019/01/25/feature/his-brother-confessed-to-gunning-down-17-people-in-parkland-but-hes-the-only-family-zach-cruz-has-left/

Trauma Stewardship: https://www.amazon.com/Trauma-Stewardship-Everyday-Caring-Others/dp/157675944X

Jessica's biography: https://www.washingtonpost.com/people/jessica-contrera/ 

The Waffle House: https://www.jessicacontrera.com/the-waffle-house.html

Will Leitch founded Deadspin nearly 14 years ago. Since 2008, Leitch has written and worked outside of the site, most recently as a contributing editor at New York Magazine, a national correspondent for MLB, and the host of “The Will Leitch Show” on Sports Illustrated TV.

“…During the years I actively ran [Deadspin] — now more than a decade in the past — I was ostensibly in charge of figuring out what was coming next on the sports internet; I was the supposed leader of the blog-barbarians at the gate, all those bulls (and we were all bulls) running roughshod over the Traditional Sports Media…”

Don and Will discuss how Blacktable.com led to Deadspin.com, the Deadspin of today, Will's writing of today, and revisit the infamous and “rather festive” 2008 Costas NOW (HBO) discussion where Buzz Bissinger, the author of “Friday Night Lights,” berated Will as being “…sort of like Jimmy Olsen on Percocet," and the sports blogosphere of the early aughts being “dedicated to cruelty … journalistic dishonesty, and … speed.” They’ve both come around since then.

Will lives in Athens, GA, has written four books (with a fifth on the way), and can be found on Twitter @williamfleitch.

Gideon Lewis-Kraus is a writer at large for the New York Times Magazine, a contributing writer at WIRED, and a contributing editor at Harper’s. He’s the author of a travel memoir called A Sense of Direction, and he teaches nonfiction in the Graduate Writing Program at Columbia. Here, he talks with Jacob about ideal story length (100 pages, anyone?), why it took months to work out the structure of his latest NYT Magazine piece, how he uses detail, and more.

Stories mentioned in the conversation:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/23/magazine/selling-airborne-opulence-to-the-upper-upper-upper-class.html

https://www.wired.com/story/tezos-blockchain-love-story-horror-story/

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/17/magazine/ancient-dna-paleogenomics.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/14/magazine/the-great-ai-awakening.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/13/magazine/how-the-resistance-helped-democrats-dominate-virginia.html