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If there are any screenwriters out there who want a bizarre real-life story about original sin, look no further than this amazing (and oh so depressing) Los Angeles Times feature story by Tonya Alanez about the life and times of con man Federiqkoe DiBritto III.
It has felt strange to go several days without mentioning the media coverage of the scandal at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City involving the powerful 79-year-old conservative leader Msgr. Eugene Clark and his beautiful, married, much younger secretary Laura DeFilippo.
The St. Petersburg Times has a reputation for quality journalism that is difficult to match. The newspaper is innovative, aggressive and thorough, and it often comes out with interesting articles like this one. Little nuggets about a person are often uncovered in profiles such as these.
Sridhar Pappu is a masterful writer of profiles — just a few issues back in The Atlantic, he wrote an article on Geraldo Rivera that was both respectful and critical. In the September Atlantic he writes eight pages on Mitt Romney, the Latter-day Saint who serves as the governor of Massachusetts.
This week, The Christian Science Monitor interviewed Senator Rick Santorum as part of his new book tour. And the excerpt is just lame.
I don’t mean to be snarky about this, and I don’t think that all Godbeat stories must be driven by some statistical formula, but does anyone else think that this major feature story in The New York Times is a little bit strange?
Anthony Grafton, a professor of history at Princeton University, has written a thoughtful summary of Pope Benedict XVI’s writings (The New Yorker, July 25). I apologize for my delay in mentioning this essay — it never appeared on The New Yorker‘s website, and the paper edition often reaches my home rather late in the publication week.
The nomination of Judge John Roberts is driving some Democrats to distraction because he is probably ultimately un-Borkable. As my colleague Gene Healy wrote, Roberts’ selling points include “[g]reat grades, stellar resume, nice posture, nice smile, [and] no doubt a firm handshake. But where he stands on anything is anyone’s guess. What we’ve got here is a guy who, apparently, was genetically engineered and grown in a vat for the sole purpose of getting past the Senate Judiciary Committee.”
I am not a big Huffington Post reader, but I do pay attention to the blogging of a friend of mine named Mark Joseph, one of those journalism students who went to the dark side and works in Hollywood. MJ just shot off an interesting critique of some of the early U.S. Supreme Court coverage — especially the stories focusing on the religious beliefs of nominee John Roberts and his wife, Jane.
