Reading List

I came to language only late and only peculiarly. I grew up in a household where the only books were the telephone book and some coloring books. Magazines, though, were called books, but only one magazine ever came into the house, a now-long-gone photographic general-interest weekly commandingly named Look. Words in this household were not […]

This week is all about spelling. Some attempts to reform it have succeeded. (You've probably noticed that words are spelled differently in the US than in British English.) Others have failed hilariously. (You'll see.) But we're burying the lede; our first topic is that word itself: 'lede.' How did it find its current form? Then, we'll discuss the godfather of American English himself, Noah Webster. (Yes, that's where we got half our name.)

“Making Federal Buildings Beautiful Again” has little to actually do with beauty, or culture, or even buildings, and everything to do with power.

This week, Jason and Fitz write about two authors who shaped their ambitions (and perhaps their styles) as writers, David Foster Wallace and John Updike.

A Future News special: How Google, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, CNN, Fox News, NBC News, BBC News, ABC News, CBS News, NPR, The New York Times and The Washington Post will cover the vote

Given The Intercept's vehement denials, readers are entitled to see for themselves what the truth is: transparency journalism with integrity requires.

Over the weekend, the Union Leader, a newspaper in Manchester, New Hampshire, endorsed Joe Biden for president. “We have found Mr. Biden to be a caring, compassionate and professional public servant,” an editorial in the paper read; President Trump, by contrast, “is not always 100 percent wrong, but he is 100 percent wrong for America.” […]

How a media mogul defined class and invented the modern magazine

Walter Cronkite once said that “journalism is what we need to make democracy work.” He was absolutely right, which is why today’s assault on journalism by Wall Street, billionaire businessmen, Silicon Valley, and Donald Trump presents a crisis—and why we must take concrete action. Real journalism is different from the gossip, punditry, and clickbait that […]

What was once a space characterized by scrappy upstarts is now a third-of-a-billion-dollar endeavor — but still with a lot of scrappy upstarts.

Wednesday is production day at the Point Reyes Light, a weekly newspaper based in the town of Inverness, just over an hour north of San Francisco along the bucolic, switchbacked coastal roads of West Marin County. In the middle of the Light’s skylit newsroom, lined with heavy wooden desks and filing cabinets containing years of […]