the best enterprise/project writers

Oh, and Dan Wetzel and Charles Robinson, of course.

And, magazine-wise, George Dohrmann at Sports Illustrated.

(Of course, all of SI's writers could probably qualify as "enterprise" writers in some way, particularly if they were writing the same material for a newspaper. But I'm thinking more about people who combine writing, shoe-leather reporting, a dash of anonymous sourcing to get things going, and some form of number crunching or document sifting.)

 

Not sports.

Dan Barry.

www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/10/14/us/this-land-elyria-ohio.html#/#donnas-diner

www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/10/14/us/this-land-elyria-ohio.html#/#elyrian-landscape

www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/10/14/us/this-land-elyria-ohio.html#/#elyria-then-elyria-now

 

I was just getting ready to say Charles Robinson.

 

http://gawker.com/5951763/a-cloying-tale-of-small-town-americana-by-dan-barry

 

Shocking that Gawker would hate something that everyone else quite liked. They're usually so un-contrarian.

 

In other breaking news, Slate trumpeted a counter-intuitive conclusion today.

 

Who knows America or Americans better than Gawker*?




*nearly everyone, unless by "America" you mean "Elizabeth Street," and by "Americans" you mean the four classmates from UVa you now share your Greenpoint apartment with.

 

Oh look, the kids who used to heckle from the back of class during earnest homework presentations are all grows up now!

 

Such are the hardships of the professional contrarian. (Even if Nolan has a point - and in this case I'm not sure he does - it often gets lost in the maze of Gawker's own conventions against convention and sour self-regard.)

 

I think that Nolan's point is that Barry essentially, in ostensibly glorifying flyover country Americana, frequently stereotypes it/condescends it instead.

It's a fair point, though the delivery, yeah, kind of gets in the way.

 

http://gawker.com/5831724/the-worst-50-states-in-america

 

Gene Weingarten and Eli Saslow at the Washington Post.