Immersing himself in the fast-paced world of restaurants, Angel Dean Lopez meets a Japanese restaurateur, quickly teaming up they attempt to bring karaoke to America — but competition is nipping at their heels. A fascinating snapshot into a surreal period in someone’s life.
“Because when I saw you sing, I suddenly understood how karaoke can work in America. In Japan, everybody studies music in school. When they sing the song, they feel it’s important to do it correctly. But you just jumped in and had fun. You didn’t care if you sucked. That’s the way it has to be in America!”
In our last Top Five of the year, we are bringing you some fantastic stories from a broad range of publications. We begin with a powerful piece on gun violence, written by a reporter who embeds herself for a year in a high school. We then go back in time to the heady days of Silicon Valley in the 90s, before taking a look at the increasingly disturbing abilities of AI. A delve into the world of audiophiles follows before we finish on a seasonal note, with a lovely essay on the Christmas tree trade. Enjoy reading and happy holidays!
Noelle Crombie | The Oregonian | December 11, 2022 | 3,274 words
If you need a reminder of why we need strong local newsrooms, look no further than this powerful project. Reporter Noelle Crombie spent a year at Rosemary Anderson, an alternative high school in Rockwood, a neighborhood in Gresham, Oregon, buffeted by racism, poverty, and COVID-19. Her goal: to document the impact of skyrocketing gun violence on the students, teachers, and support staff. The result is a four-part series, of which this article, about the death of student Dante McFallo, is the first entry. “Five students, including Dante, have died in shootings in the past 2½ years,” Crombie writes. “Another student died in a stabbing and two died in car wrecks. All were young men of color, just 18 or 19. Gunfire wounded at least two other Rosemary Anderson students; both survived.” Make sure to spend time with the photos and videos that accompany the story. —SD
Natalie So | The Believer | December 9, 2022 | 12,558 words
Computer chips were “the dope of the ’90s.” And during those years, Silicon Valley, changing dramatically from the personal computing boom, was the Wild West. In this splendid piece for The Believer, Natalie So takes us back to a dark, frenzied time in the Bay Area’s history: when computer-related crime was on the rise, and a new generation of organized crime, run by Asian gangs as part of a large-scale heroin operation, targeted businesses for hardware, especially microchips. But what makes this story special is So’s exploration of her family’s — and particularly her mother’s — place within ’90s Silicon Valley. She traces her parents’ trajectories as immigrants working in technology in the Bay Area before the dot-com boom. As she unearths the past, she is in awe of her mother: street-smart, fearless, and an anomaly in a culture that portrayed Asian American women as docile and passive. In a story that has it all — from true crime to history to memoir — So uncovers a chapter of the computer industry’s past that’s been largely forgotten. “Who writes the Silicon Valley story?” asks So. “And who is excluded from it?” This brings to life a seminal period in the Bay Area’s tech industry, but even more, it’s an epic piece of family history. —CLR
Keith Holyoak | MIT Press Reader | December 2, 2022 | 3,335 words
Artificial intelligence has fascinated me ever since 2017, when someone told me (in all seriousness!) that I’d be replaced by it within the decade, my editorial experience and skill first duplicated then surpassed by a machine that eats knowledge for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, 24/7, 365. Happily, this hasn’t happened — yet — but as Keith Holyoak says in this piece adapted from his book The Spider’s Thread: Metaphor in Mind, Brain, and Poetry, computers have long surpassed our ability to do math calculations. Could artificial intelligence eventually eclipse our creative abilities when it comes to language? Holyoak suggests perhaps not: “Though I remain officially agnostic, for the purpose of the specific question that presently concerns us — can AI write authentic poetry? — the preponderance of evidence leads me to answer “no.” AI has no apparent path to inner experience, which I (and many others) take to be the ultimate source of authentic poetry. A major corollary of this conclusion deserves to be stated: Inner experience can’t be defined as a computational process.” —KS
Sasha Frere-Jones | Harper’s | November 9, 2022 | 5,206 words
Perfection is a lie, but try telling that to someone with a newfound hobby. The apparatus of want — single-topic Instagram accounts, subreddits, fan forums — can turn a passing interest into an all-consuming obsession with the “endgame,” a nirvana in which all dreams are realized. For some, it’s mechanical keyboards. For others, it’s quilting. For the community that Sasha Frere-Jones explores in this fascinating piece, it’s audiophiles. (Or the “triode horn mafia,” as a subset of them is known.) But while there’s plenty of subculture gawking to be done here, what with the six-figure speaker prices and jargon-laden schisms, Frere-Jones threads the piece with an emotional honesty that turns it into something special. He entered this world because he loves music, and he wanted to hear the music he loves as truly as he could. Those moments where he manages to do just that, and to render the experience with the clarity that’s given him a long career as a music critic, are the ones that turn this piece into something else entirely. Discount the audiophiles all you want. But if this piece doesn’t make you want to throw your favorite piece of vinyl on a turntable and throw your smartphone into the sea, then I don’t know what to tell you. —PR
Owen Long | Curbed in partnership with Epic Magazine | December 7, 2022 | 6,374 words
Who knew the business of Christmas trees could be completely wild? Just read Owen Long’s entertaining story about the Christmas tree industry in New York City. Here, there are no quaint family tree farms or small neighborhood pop-ups — this ruthless industry is run by a few eccentric businessmen, called “tree men,” who spend most of the year preparing for the holiday season. There’s George Nash, an old hippie who sells trees to much of Harlem; Kevin Hammer, known as the “Keyser Söze of Christmas” and the man responsible for shaping NYC’s industry into what it is today; and Greg Walsh, who is Long’s boss (and looks exactly like Santa Claus). I don’t want to say too much — just sit down with a hot drink and dive into this festive and fascinating piece. There are some pretty hilarious lines, so be careful not to spit out your eggnog. —CLR
This story by Lynzy Billing is a stunning piece of journalism. Billing, a British journalist with Afghan and Pakistani roots, returned to Afghanistan as an adult to investigate what happened to her birth parents. Private investigators laughed at her or wanted nothing to do with it, so she decided to dig into her past herself. Over the next several years, Billing’s reporting shifted; what was initially a personal journey to learn about her origins became something else entirely: an investigation into night raids, or top-secret, CIA-backed operations meant to target insurgents.
With unprecedented on-the-ground access to survivors, eyewitnesses, and even fighters themselves, Billing tracked hundreds of night raids by one of the four “Zero Units,” or squads of U.S.-trained Afghan special forces soldiers. (These are also known as 02s.) With the help of Muhammad Rehman Shirzad, a forensic pathologist from Nangarhar province, over the course of her reporting Billing has identified 452 civilians killed in the 02’s raids over four years. But with “undercounting deaths and overstating accuracy” being a common practice — and those in power ultimately not caring about civilian casualties — the full civilian death tally for this 02, plus the other Zero Units, is likely much higher. Billing’s conversations over three years with 02 soldiers like Baseer and Hadi are particularly riveting: “I’d come to see them as flawed soldiers who, in their way, were trying to pull some good out of their lot by sharing what they know,” she writes, “even if it meant exposing their role in killing innocents.” But really, the entire piece is extraordinary. I was gripped until the final line.
According to Baseer, Hadi is the joker of the two. He squeezed his friend’s shoulder reassuringly, grinning at him. “Don’t worry, she’s not American,” he said in Pashto. In an attempt to reassure them, I tell them I am English, not American, and of Afghan and Pakistani descent. Hadi smiled weakly, but it was clear he was unconvinced.
Both soldiers had obtained leave passes under false pretenses to meet me. The relationship between journalist and soldier seemed to offer them a space where they could discuss their actions — even boast about them when marveling at their superior training and autonomy — because I think they knew I wasn’t going to turn them in or use their stories as leverage.
Baseer’s family had left Afghanistan when he was 3, during the same fractious conflict that killed my own family. Eventually, his family settled in a refugee camp in Peshawar in Pakistan. Growing up, he considered both the Americans and the Soviets infidels, but he later came to realize that the Taliban have their own cruelties.
It requires mettle to be an investigative reporter, and the best in the business channel that fortitude into stories worthy of the subject matter — stories written with bravery, precision, and empathy. Our picks on this list, as well as a few suggested by the writers themselves, examine sexual violence, drug addiction, and government policy that destroys families, among other topics. It’s dark stuff, but in the hands of these writers, the stories sing. The tunes may be mournful, but they’re also gorgeous. You’ll want to listen until the final notes.
Janelle Nanos | The Boston Globe Magazine | July 28, 2022 | 11,329 words
“Even if many of us never find them again, they may never really be lost,” writes Janelle Nanos about our memories. For most of her life, Kate Price had felt, deep in her body, that she had been wronged when she was a child. When she met Nanos in 2012, Price had already spent decades interrogating her own memory and history, but together — as journalist and survivor — they embarked on a journey to make sense of Price’s childhood, and to find evidence that she was sexually abused by her father and maternal grandfather, and sold for sex to truckers who drove through Pennsylvania. It’s a challenging read about child abuse, long-lasting trauma, memory, and family, but also a remarkably told story 10 years in the making about a woman who risked everything to discover the truth, and who defied the odds and has managed to build a happy life. The piece plays eerie visual tricks on the reader’s eye, from Erin Clark’s double-exposure photos to subtly moving layouts that make you question what you’re seeing; this imagery, combined with audio clips, take you deep into this incredible story. —Cheri Lucas Rowlands
Janelle Nanos recommends two reads about family, loss, and memory:
This horrific story about a UK hospital’s failure to save the life of a young child — written by the child’s mother — was for me a reminder that it’s important to trust your own instincts when facing a medical crisis in order to ensure that your loved ones get the care they need.
This essay made me smile and weep, and brought on a cascade of other emotions as I thought about the prospect of what I’d do if facing a similar challenge with my own children. It was written by the mother of a child diagnosed with Tay-Sachs disease who decided to celebrate her with a lifetime’s worth of birthdays.
Caitlin Dickerson | The Atlantic | August 8th, 2022 | 28,600 words
In my original blurb for this story, when it was featured in Longreads’ Top 5 newsletter, I wrote that Caitlin Dickerson’s “examination of the Trump administration’s family separation policy is a reporting tour de force and an American horror story that should be read and studied as long as the republic stands.” I remain steadfast in this belief. Assign it in journalism classes, government seminars, law courses, social work degree programs. Every American should know this story and grapple with its devastating contents. And, lest we act like we’re past the cruelty that Dickerson so masterfully unveils, family separation is still happening. Read this story, then use it to fuel demands that policymakers and law enforcement cease family separation once and for all. —Seyward Darby
Ümit Üngör and Annsar Shahhoud | New Lines Magazine | April 27, 2022 | 7,881 words
This piece instantly came to mind when I thought about investigative reporting. It’s haunted me. A harrowing read, it begins with a description of the videos that inspired Ümit Üngör and Annsar Shahhoud to start the investigation: two men, in broad daylight, executing 41 civilians and dumping the bodies in a pre-dug pit prepared with car tires for incineration. Detailed vividly, I warn it contains upsetting descriptions of violence. The callousness of these videos stood out for Üngör and Shahhoud, even though, as researchers of mass violence and genocide in Syria and elsewhere, they have watched thousands of hours of distressing footage. For previous research, they had created a Facebook profile of a young, pro-regime woman from an Alawite middle-class family — “Anna” — and used her to interview dozens of Assad’s perpetrators. After narrowing their scope with on-the-ground research, they scoured Facebook with this profile, finally recognizing the main shooter from the videos in a photo. Friending him on Facebook messenger, “Anna” leads him on a catfish dance for months before finally approaching the topic of the massacre and convincing him to confess that he “killed a lot of people.” Tracking down a killer and getting him to admit the soul-destroying acts he has committed is an impressive feat. But it took a toll, and to learn more about what Üngör and Shahhoud went through during the investigation, listen to The Guardian‘s podcast series “Searching for the Shadow Man” — they could not keep “Anna” alive for much longer. —Carolyn Wells
Paula Lavigne and Tom Junod | ESPN | April 11, 2022 | 31,519 words
There are few sports scandals more horrifying than Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky being indicted in 2011 for the sexual abuse of dozens of young boys. It killed the program’s reputation; it led to the ouster of legendary head coach Joe Paterno, a man revered in the town of State College and beyond. But decades before, the Penn State football system met another monster in its midst. Todd Hodne, a young and aggressive defenseman, was arrested for rape in 1978. Paterno ousted him from the locker room, but the end of Hodne’s football career didn’t mean the end of his atrocities. With patience and empathy, Lavigne and Junod piece together the saga in an investigation that’s something more than a magazine story. For the women who crossed Hodne’s ruinous path, it’s an exorcism, a defiant testimonial that desecration doesn’t have to mean destruction. For the reader, it’s a crucial reminder that the sports world has a way of coddling even its outcasts. And for the journalists who searched and listened and wrote this outstanding work, it’s yet another laurel in their already legendary careers. Between the ongoing true-crime podcast wave and Netflix phenomena like Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, it’s clear that our society has developed a lurid fixation with serially violent men. “Untold” will help you remember that every voyeuristic frisson comes at the price of another person’s life. —Peter Rubin
Tom Junod on his favorite investigation of the year:
Full disclosure: The people who wrote this are my friends and colleagues at ESPN. But my admiration for this story about NFL owner Daniel Snyder goes well beyond the personal. Simply put: The question that the writers started with was provocative enough — with all of Snyder’s baggage, why doesn’t the NFL just get rid of him? But the answer was, literally, jaw-dropping: Snyder remains an NFL owner because he’s let it be known that he’s investigated all the other owners. I mean, when I read that, I’ll admit that I was like, “Holy cow — these guys better have the goods.” That they had the goods is proven by all the disclosures that keep following in the original story’s wake, and the fact that Snyder is putting the Washington Commanders up for sale. But even more telling is the experience of reading the story. Sure, it has all the investigative revelations promised by its rather ungainly digital title. But it’s also an expert exercise in melding investigative and narrative journalism, one that, by its end, convinces readers that they know very little about how rich and powerful people live — about what they value and what they might be willing to destroy.
Seth Harp | Rolling Stone | September 4, 2022 | 5,922words
They’re young, healthy members of the U.S. Army stationed at Fort Bragg. So why are far too many of them dying by accidental fentanyl overdose? That’s the question that Seth Harp set out to answer in this deeply reported piece for Rolling Stone, but he ended up discovering much more about the needless reasons Fort Bragg soldiers are dying while stateside, despite a lack of transparency from top brass at the military installation. Is it the nature of the work at a place that houses mostly “male soldiers in combat-arms units”? Could the personality traits that make for elite soldiers make them more likely to dismiss the risks of drug use? Could the horrors of serving in Afghanistan and the recent U.S. withdrawal have spawned trauma that causes soldiers to self-medicate? In this unflinching piece, Harp does the work to try to find out and call the U.S. Army to account. Aside from the accidental overdose crisis killing soldiers at Fort Bragg, perhaps Harp’s most alarming discovery is about the most common way that soldiers stationed there die: “Forty-one Fort Bragg soldiers took their own lives in 2020 and 2021, making suicide the leading cause of death. A spokesman for the Army, Matthew Leonard, confirmed that no other base has ever recorded a higher two-year suicide toll.” —Krista Stevens
Ten years ago, Jen Hensel lost her daughter, Avielle Richman, in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut. Twenty first graders and six adults were murdered. That shooting should have been a singular event: a transformative moment that should have led to stricter gun control laws and a national coming together to make schools safer. While some legislation has passed since then, it’s certainly not enough. For NPR, Tovia Smith tells Hensel’s story in the years after Avielle’s death: how she and her husband, Jeremy Richman, set up a foundation focused on neuroscience research and violence prevention; how she has coped with the death of Richman, who died by suicide in 2019; and how — despite it all — she has found some happiness with her two kids, Owen and Imogen. Smith’s portrait of Hensel is devastating and emotional; the piece forces you to imagine her family’s pain. “You have to imagine it,” Richman once said. To face the horror of gun violence — not turn away from it.
But embedded in every such joy is perpetual pain. It’s no longer the raw, relentless kind that made it hard to stand up 10 years ago, Hensel says. But it’s still sharp enough to blindside you and bring you to your knees.
Hensel’s dear friend Francine Wheeler, who also lost her 6-year-old, Ben, at Sandy Hook, agrees. They share an aversion to the word “closure” and bristle at the very idea of a “10th anniversary” — and the implied expectations around where they should be in the arc of their grief.
Sasha Frere-Jones is best known as a critic, but he’s a music lover at heart, as is clear in this reported essay about the maddening, seductive world of audiophilia. On one side, the many of us who are satisfied with cheap earbuds; on the other, the seeming fetishism of what he calls the “triode horn mafia.” Triangulating between those extremes isn’t a given, but he does so with aplomb.
I am heartbroken that the masters of John Coltrane’s Impulse! recordings were lost in a 2008 fire at Universal Studios. But I still think the existing analog and digital copies of those recordings are good enough to spread the message. An obsession with the quality of recordings is, on some level, antithetical to the spirit of mindful listening. The constant, beautiful, churning production of music in the present moment reminds us that fetishizing the past, rather than simply learning from it, is a non-musical obsession. You can love the texture and living power of recordings—I absolutely do—without losing your goddamn mind. In their back-and-forth manner, all technologies have been improving, even if the peristalsis of history is hard to follow. The necessary gear will be there, somewhere, and even bad gear is good enough for great music.
This eye-opening, entertaining story by Owen Long exposes the wild and ruthless business of selling Christmas trees in New York City. The industry is run by a few eccentric businessmen, called “tree men,” who spend most of the year preparing for the holiday season. There’s George Nash, an old hippie who sells trees to much of Harlem; Kevin Hammer, known as the “Keyser Söze of Christmas” and the man responsible for shaping NYC’s industry into what it is today; and Greg Walsh, who is Long’s boss (and looks exactly like Santa Claus). It’s a fascinating (and at times, very funny) read.
I’ve met several people who’ve sold Christmas trees for Hammer. Almost all of them asked to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals. They said that to work for Hammer, there is no interview and there is no application. The only way to enter his network is to be referred by an insider. You and a partner — Hammer’s sellers always work in pairs — call a number around October, and a voice instructs you both to show up at a certain location (typically a sidewalk outside a bodega) around Thanksgiving. When you arrive, the two of you wait, possibly hours, potentially days, for another phone call from a different number. A new voice instructs you to construct a small shack out of pallets, plywood, even garbage, then continue waiting for the arrival of hundreds of Christmas trees, which will soon appear overnight along with clippers, chain saws, and plastic netting. You are instructed to sell each tree at the highest possible price.
