Best of 2019 — Long-form Journalism
By: Amanda J. Ray
Tags: Longform, Year In Review, Journalism, 2019

Every year, I set a seemingly achievable goal for myself — to read twelve books. One per month. Easy, right?

As a child and teen, I was a voracious reader, easily putting away dozens of volumes annually. There were the usual suspects like Harry Potter, but mostly scientific and/or journalistic non-fiction. That pattern has continued to this day — 80% of the books I read this year were non-fiction.

Yes, I say 80% to obfuscate the fact that I only read five books this year. I’m sure there’s something to be said about over-scheduling, short millennial attention spans, and general ennui to account for this — but that’s not the point here.

The point is that I still read — a lot, in fact! As an Extremely Online Person, most of the content I consume is in small, digital chunks — from the latest news (see tweet, infra) to my personal favorite — long-form journalism.

Long-form journalism is a broad umbrella — personal essays, exposés, narrative journalism, etc., are all fair game. Below — my absolute favorites from 2019.

One Couple’s Tireless Crusade to Stop a Genetic Killer | Kelly Clancy | Wired

Ever since I read The Family that Couldn’t Sleep by D.T. Max in high school, I’ve been fascinated by prion diseases — a category of diseases caused by malformed proteins which, in turn, cause the proteins around them to malform, tessellating into plaques which cause holes in the brain and a whole host of other nasty symptoms (including certain death). The most well-known prion disease is Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy — Mad Cow in cattle, Variant Creutzfelt-Jakob disease in humans — but Max’s book and this article both focus on the genetically transmitted Fatal Familial Insomnia.

This story gives a great, digestible primer to the science behind prion diseases, but is so much more — it’s about family, perseverance, and hope in the face of truly insurmountable odds.

If you’re interested in more, I cannot recommend The Family that Couldn’t Sleep enough; This Podcast Will Kill You also had an incredible episode about prion diseases generally.

The Jungle Prince of Delhi | Ellen Barry | The New York Times

What starts as exploration of urban myth becomes so much more — the evils of British colonial rule, the lives changed forever by Partition, and the wistful regrets of a long-fractured family.

The Champion Who Picked a Date to Die | Andrew Keh | The New York Times

The human side of the right-to-die conversation. How does it feel to know you can — and that you have to — schedule your own death? The end to your pain, but a transition to a different kind of pain for those that love you. Tenderly and lovingly told, accompanied by heart-wrenchingly intimate photographs.

Chaos at the Top of the World | Joshua Hammer | GQ

When I was in high school, I read Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air — a first-hand account of the author’s experiences on Everest during its deadliest climbing season at the time. Though I’m emphatically indoorsy, it sparked a great interest in mountaineering journalism.

Hammer’s piece focuses mostly on a single day where nearly one hundred climbers — many insufficiently inexperienced — made the summit push, as well as the commercial and cultural forces that are conspiring to make the world’s tallest mountain a truly dangerous tourist destination.

What Really Happened to Malaysia’s Missing Airplane | William Langewiesche | The Atlantic

I can think of few things that have grasped the world’s collective horror and imagination in the last decade quite like the disappearance Malaysia Airlines flight 370 in the early hours of March 8, 2014.

This comprehensive account weaves together satellite and communications data, interviews with beachcombing debris-searchers, and a healthy dash of conspiracy. While we now know with some degree of certainty what happened to the plane, there’s still a complex web of circumstances that allowed it to take place which may never be fully untangled.

I Was Caroline Calloway | Natalie Beach | The Cut

As an Extremely Online Person and also a millennial woman, I follow my fair share of influencers on social media. When I heard about this piece, I was interested in a take-down of influencer culture from someone who had been on the inside — I instead found a riveting story of the complexities of female friendship, the loneliness of insecurity, and an enduring mystery — where are the Yale plates?

Hideous Men | E. Jean Carroll | The Cut

Content warning: sexual assault.

I grew up reading my mom’s copies of Elle magazine, for which E. Jean is a longtime columnist. Her tone was, and still is, a revelation — unlike anything I’ve ever known. She’s darkly funny and matter-of-fact as she discusses some of the worst men she’s ever known, and how her perspective and courage have (and haven’t) shifted over time.

The Weight I Carry | Tommy Tomlinson | The Atlantic

A beautifully written story of a lifetime spent at war with your own body. The Jason Isbell motif throughout doesn’t hurt, either.