I'm the chief digital writer for the Columbia Journalism Review
From Ted Gioia: "Crosby had to do two different live broadcasts, and the network refused his proposal that they pre-record the later show on 16-inch transcription disks, since the sound quality was noticeably inferior. In 1947, a stranger from Northern California named Jack Mullin made the trek to Hollywood
From Jon Schuppe for NBC: "The unclaimed dead of Hinds County, Mississippi, are buried along a dirt road on the grounds of a jail work farm, their graves marked with just a metal rod and a number. For centuries, the solemn duty of burying people who died with no
From Elamin Abdelmahmoud for Rolling Stone: "Ralph Peer was the beginning of the business of country music. He went to the South with the sole purpose of finding competition for Bessie Smith, the Empress of the Blues, a black woman. In the South, he was convinced to record Fiddlin’
From Jacobo Prisco for CNN: "In New York City, only about 100 of the 1,000 crosswalk buttons actually function, confirmed a spokesperson from the city’s Department of Transportation in an email. That number has steadily decreased in recent years: When the New York Times revealed that the
From Sean Thomas for The Independent: "Sitting in her little house near Tarbes, in the French Pyrenees, Marie-Pierre Manet-Beauzac is talking about her ancestry. The story of her bloodline is marked with a unique sadness: because she belongs to an extraordinary tribe of hidden pariahs, repressed in France for
From Tom Scocca for New York magazine: "I’ve told the story over and over, to various doctors, till it almost sounds like a coherent narrative. The story, I told them, happened in two parts. In the spring and summer, part one, I chased the swelling and numbness and
From Twenty Thousand Hertz: "Pinkfong's version of Baby Shark is especially sticky, but I think that there's something elementally enticing and irreducibly catchy about Baby Shark no matter what its arrangement. And I think this because the Pinkfong version, it's not the first
From Mark Schrad for Politico: "Of the dozens of vodka factories strung across Russia’s 11 time zones, the crown jewel of the Russian liquor industry is the Kristall distillery in Moscow, birthplace of the world-famous Stolichnaya brand. Founded in 1901 as “Moscow State Wine Warehouse No. 1,” the
Hi everyone! Mathew Ingram here. Before we begin, I realize that the "year-end round-up" newsletter has become so ubiquitous that you may have no room in your life for another one. But the round-up has become a time-tested tradition in the media business for some pretty compelling reasons
From TheForce.net: "Here's how that came about: My co-producer was Tony Bongiovi. Jon Bon Jovi was his little cousin and by little I mean we were all in our 30s and early 40s but Jon at that time was 17 years old. And we were in
From Brenna Ehrlich for Rolling Stone: "After Adele Mazzone died at age 74 of complications from a stroke, her remains had been handed over to Harvard as part of the Anatomical Gift Program, a donation-based initiative in which people can leave their bodies to the school for students to
From Kathy Gilsinan at Politico: "It was the spring of 2012 and nearly three weeks had passed since police had marched Rita Crundwell, the town’s well-liked comptroller, out the door of that very same building in handcuffs. In that time, the magnitude of her betrayal had grown clearer,