Esquire's story on the NIU killer

I'm fascinated. I'll read it. Oh ....these stories are often the best. I've said before - The piece on the Beslan Terror Siege is simply one of the best pieces of reporting I've ever come across. Not to mention a damn fine read.

 

I haven't gotten to it yet because I'm still reading the one about the guys tunneling out of prison.

Jones is my favorite Esquire writer, but the siege story was the best magazine writing I've ever read.

 

For the record. I agree that the story was outstanding. I just can't get over the no peanuts thing....

 

That story is next on my to-do list.

And is NOT having a bag of eight or so peanuts on a plane REALLY so tough to take? I mean, seriously.

 

What if the flight attendant made you stop watching porn? Some people feel that way about peanuts.

 

Read this one and the tunnel story back to back, and they're both very well done, which is what I've come to expect from Esquire. The "What It's Like .... To Be Photographed Nude" was quite captivating, too.

I don't know if the NIU story was better than the KIA funerals story Jones did a couple months back, but it's damn good.

 

I don't understand how he could possibly write the opening scene as vividly as he did. No one as with Kaczmierak, and then he killed himself. But the writer has him picking up a gun, putting it down, looking in the mirror, etc., like he was in the room with him. I don't get it - fabricated? Great story, but the opening seems to stretch the limits of nonfiction.

 

I'm sure it's saving US Air a ton of fuel. It's going to save them from bankruptcy the same way that cutting your job is going to save newspapers.

But back to the story...

This is why journalism can be so important. We had this sort of superficial understanding of who this guy was and what happened. But when somebody digs beyond the superficial, the picture changes and I think it provides more than just good story telling for a reader. It helps us see who we are and who is around us. That's utility. That's a service we provide that I think would alter our culture, considerably, for the worse if it were lost.