Best Longform Reporting of 2011

December 12, 2011 3:25 PM

Longform's Best of 2011 - Top 10

- The Apostate (MeFi Thread)

- The Movie Set That Ate Itself (MeFi Thread)

- Watching the Murder of an Innocent Man

- In the Sorting Office

- A Murder Foretold (MeFi Thread)

- Could Conjoined Twins Share a Mind?

- The Stoner Arms Dealers (MeFi Thread)

- This Tech Bubble is Different

- The Greatest Paper That Ever Died

- Dispatch From Angola

posted by vidur (13 comments total)

Ah! Seven of ten flagged with Instapaper so I can process them with Readability and read them on my iPad later. Seriously, I love what Longform is doing raising the quality of stuff we read online. But then so much of my online reading is junk food, it's hard to integrate something like what they highlight.

There's 11–20, too.
posted by Nelson at 3:46 PM on December 12, 2011 [1 favorite]

This Tech Bubble is Different was linked previously, in a post about social network freemium games and precision advertising.
posted by filthy light thief at 3:47 PM on December 12, 2011

Sorry, not sure how I missed that. Slightly different URL, it seems. Also sorry about the slight formatting glitch.
posted by vidur at 3:50 PM on December 12, 2011

I remember reading the Grantland piece (The Greatest Paper That Ever Died). That was pretty much the moment I realized that Grantland was actually going to have some good stuff. Definitely worth a read.
posted by Ghidorah at 4:15 PM on December 12, 2011

When I finally got around to looking at Instapaper, I went batshit insane for my iPad again. Thanks for putting this list out there. LF also has a twitter feed that I watch now for new articles.
posted by jquinby at 4:17 PM on December 12, 2011

Thanks for alerting us. I enjoyed the 2010 version of this post a lot last year.
posted by dragonplayer at 6:29 PM on December 12, 2011

Nearly 100 Fantastic Pieces of Journalism of: 2010, 2009, 2008
Give Me Something To Read Best of 2010
Pulitzer Prize winners 2010
The Best American Essays 2010
posted by stbalbach at 8:03 PM on December 12, 2011

One thing about these best of nf lists, they traffic in true crime pieces for some reason.
posted by stbalbach at 8:11 PM on December 12, 2011

The Conjoined Twins article was also discussed on Mefi: Krista and Tatiana Hogan turning 4.5
posted by Kevin Street at 8:34 PM on December 12, 2011

David Grann is one of the best writers of this type of piece going around right now.

His Wikipedia page has links to all of his great pieces. If I can recommend Trial By Fire and Mysterious Circumstances.

As a journalist and writer - I enjoy Grann's pieces more than just about anything going around at the moment. And his book Lost City of Z is a great read too.
posted by chris88 at 9:09 PM on December 12, 2011 [1 favorite]

Wow, I didn't realize that Grann had written so many of my favorite longform pieces. The Brand too? Well alright then!
posted by X-Himy at 4:39 AM on December 13, 2011

Wow, I've spent hours at the public library reading most of these articles in their plastic-jacketed New Yorkers. All very memorable...unfortunately, reading A Murder Foretold has made me seriously question returning to Guatemala for some 2012 Mayan madness..

On the whole, this list needs some levity.
posted by obscurator at 6:06 PM on December 13, 2011

That settles it. I will never get through my queue on Instapaper. Great list and great post!
posted by Busy Old Fool at 9:46 AM on December 21, 2011