texas monthly

3 GREAT STORIES: Starring #MeToo, mock trades, & Mars

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Every week, I shine the spotlight on some of the best storytelling in the business and offer my comments. “3 Great Stories of the Week” will post every Monday at 8 AM.

#MeToo: Rape on the Night Shift (1/20/18, Reveal Podcast): With momentum for the #MeToo movement growing mainly in Washington and Hollywood, credit the producers and reporters at the Reveal podcast for investigating its impact in more hidden venues.

This episode repurposes a report from 2015 about an epidemic of rape and assault among female janitors. The report grips and devastates, and it leads into a follow-up and several strong discussions about the future of #MeToo. This is exactly what journalism should do: inform listeners about an issue, expose them to unheard stories in a compelling way, and expand their overall awareness and understanding moving forward.

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3 GREAT STORIES: Starring clickbait, death row, and a $75 truck

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Every week, I shine the spotlight on some of the best storytelling in the business and offer my comments. “3 Great Stories of the Week” will post every Monday at 8 AM.

The virologist (1/5/15, New Yorker): Happy new year, journalist and storyteller friends!

Want to start 2015 with a startling look at your industry?

Andrew Marantz fires a fastball high and tight in this long-form piece from the New Yorker’s first issue of the year. The writer profiles a content creator of a different brand: a 27-year-old named Emerson Spartz who, per the article, “has been successfully launching web sites for nearly half his life.”

What are these web sites? They are cold, hard generators of clickbait.

To read about Spartz’s operation is to peek into a calculated industry that shadows the journalistic experience while utterly ignoring its ethics. In this case, Marantz is as brutal a storyteller as Spartz is a content creator, refusing to hold back and expertly matching the tone of his work with the personality of his subject. Come for the sobering look at the industry, but stay for a well-written and thought-provoking piece of journalism.

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