Pamela Colloff
@pamelacolloff
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@propublica reporter + @NYTMag staff writer. Texas-based criminal justice reporter, storyteller, curious person. At work on a book for @randomhouse .
Austin, TX
Joined January 2011
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Pinned Tweet
The world is on fire, but here’s some good news: I’m writing a book!
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I once watched a colleague (who had just returned to work after maternity leave) highlight every email in her inbox and press delete. When she saw the look on my face, she shrugged and said, "If they really need to talk to me, they'll find me." I think of her nearly every day.
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Verbatim quote from my 8-year-old, delivered with maximum earnestness, as I tucked her in: “I think the only way I can make it through this very difficult time is with the emotional support of a puppy.”
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I did not fully grasp what was happening in this footage when I first saw it. Now it seems clear that this officer tricked the mob away from the unguarded door to the Senate, using himself—a Black man—as the bait. He is a national hero. And lucky to be alive.
@hudeatsbugs
@igorbobic
The officer initially scopes out the door, sees it's not guarded, and tries to block the way. More rioters pour up the stairs after them, and the officer seems to go with a new strategy – he shoves the first rioter, pissing him off, and then leads the whole mob the other way.
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To the guy on my flight who got out of his seat and marched down the aisle to tell a beleaguered mother to quiet her fussy toddler: may you one day be stuck on a flight with your own inconsolable toddler and suddenly realize, with searing clarity, what an asshole you once were.
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After 3.5 days without heat or power in Austin, my kids, husband & I found refuge in a friend's garage apt, where there's heat. We're luckier than many.
The suffering here is immense. Food shortages. Unsafe drinking water. Impassable roads. Flooded homes. A humanitarian crisis.
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I've heard from so many friends--one spoke through sobs--who are barely managing to do their jobs while caring for young kids. They're operating on little sleep, struggling w/ depression. One is leaving her job. We need to be talking more about how to support parents, esp. women.
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The only thing more devastating than reading that a 17-month-old was shot in the face is knowing that a 17-month-old being shot in the face won’t change anything.
UMC has confirmed a 17 month old is on the way to Lubbock after being shot in the face.
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🚨🚨🚨Breathtaking news. "Gov. Gavin Newsom is suspending the death penalty in California, calling it discriminatory and immoral and granting reprieves to the 737 condemned inmates on the nation’s largest Death Row.”
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My 8-year-old just applied to be a counselor at the at-home summer camp we’re creating for her and her brother. She did not pad her résumé.
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Feeling like there is zero guidance for those of us who are vaccinated but have unvaccinated children.
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So many reporters here in Texas have been doing *incredible* reporting in the aftermath of the Uvalde shooting--filing flurries of record requests, asking tough questions, holding law enforcement to account. Just a reminder of why it's so important to support your local newsroom.
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“While Texas prisoners can read Hitler's manifesto, the state banned pioneering Black journalist Ida B. Wells' book 'On Lynchings' because its examination of racist vigilante mobs used 'racial slurs.'" By
@keribla
:
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Amid the relief everyone feels in Austin today, I hope this story—about how police initially treated the bomber’s first victim “like a suspect in his own death,” and failed to adequately investigate his murder or protect his family—does not get lost.
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I started watching The Undoing and all I can think about is the fact that women are not allowed to age.
Hugh Grant and Nicole Kidman are six years apart in age.
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This is how bad it's gotten: I just emailed myself a list of links to all my open tabs, then closed the tabs.
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Whether you've read this story, or you've never read this story, read it today. The first paragraph never ceases to stun me.
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Just a reminder that most Texans can't pick up and leave when our state leadership fails us. And many of us hope to make our state a better, more equitable place.
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I didn't get to go to Cancun, but here are some things I did get to cross off my bucket list:
*rationing food
*boiling water for everything, even tooth brushing
*warming pipes w/ a hair dryer
*tucking kids into bed in multiple winter jackets, assuring them everything was A-O.K.
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“Until I see a male writer asked this question, I’m going to respectfully decline to answer it.” 🔥🔥🔥👏😎
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I can't overstate how unusual and deeply troubling this is. It demands an immediate investigation.
Texas executed a man tonight without a single media witness present because prison officials neglected to call in the reporters. There’s been at least one media witness at every one of the previous 570 executions carried out in the state since 1982.
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"'They forced me, basically, to have a child,' she said of the state after the abortion ban. But then, 'they didn’t help me take care of that child.'"
This is an enraging story, and an astonishing feat of reporting and photojournalism.
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Right now, this election feels like a 4K-word story that the writer handed in at 22K words.
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Pandemic update: my 9-year-old has taken to periodically exclaiming, between Zoom classes, "Vive la révolution!"
It's unclear where she picked this up, or what exactly she has planned.
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This photo of Ann Richards & Dolly Parton--meeting for the first time, here in Austin in 1982--hangs outside the office where I'm working right now, so I get to walk by it every day. (📸 by Scott Newton)
I love the joy in this photo, so I'm sharing it for whoever needs it today.
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My God, the courage of these people.
This is haunting. Please take two minutes to watch.
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Sarah Weddington, who represented Norma McCorvey in Roe v. Wade, died today in Austin.
I interviewed Weddington in 2003. This passage is even more poignant today.
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My son was assigned a math problem today that involved graphing when a writer would finish writing her book if she wrote x pages per month for y months. He sweetly asked if I wanted him to graph my progress with my book and I was like, WHY DON’T YOU JUST STICK TO YOUR SCHOOLWORK.
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This Linda Fairstein opinion piece attacking the Central Park Five is grotesque. You know what should be taught in all law schools? How to admit that you got it wrong, how to reckon with your mistakes, and how to make it right.
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So how do you report a story like this out? Some hints in the piece:
"ProPublica spoke to more than 15 former yacht workers"
"According to interviews with more than a dozen visitors and former resort staff"
"said...the artist commissioned by Crow"
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My 15-year-old is required to take a journalism class at his high school, and watching my shy kid take on its challenges--esp. contacting strangers and interviewing them--has made me realize that Journalism 101 is really a *life-skills* class that every teen would benefit from.
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Dream: buy a one-bedroom house that would serve as a writer's retreat for a different local writer each month. Strong coffee & lots of books would be on hand. The wifi would only work after 4 pm. Once a day, I would quietly leave meals & notes of encouragement on the porch.
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I’ve written about wrongful convictions for a long time. I can’t think of a case in which a falsely accused defendant hasn’t pleaded for his alibi witnesses to be heard.
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Whenever it’s my turn to do the grocery shopping, my husband sneaks something onto the list that he knows will make me laugh out loud at the store
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I would like to read an oral history about the last 48 hours inside Twitter HQ.
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The Larry Nassar/USA Gymnastics scandal should be on every front page of every newspaper in the country. The fact that it's not is its own scandal.
The next woman addressing the court as Victim 190. We are at 190 victims now. It's one thing to digest this as a sanitized number, and something entirely different to see each of these women stand up, speak, shake, cry, and relive their pain. It is nothing short of staggering.
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The next time I go to a Q&A, I’m going to bring an air horn, and whenever someone in the audience stands up and says, “I don’t really have a question, but...” I’m going to sound the air horn until they sit down.
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Ways to sustain your community if you have income right now:
*subscribe to your local newspaper
*order books through your local independent bookstore
*order coffee by the pound from your coffee shop
*join a CSA
*donate to a food bank
*tip well when ordering in
What else?
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This is how Texas Department of Public Safety troopers dealt with a member of the local media in Austin today. The cameraman works for Fox 7 Austin.
This is how amped up troopers were, in a crowd of students.
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This photo is so powerful. When I was expecting, I always worried that I would not be taken seriously, or that having young children would be seen as a liability. I'm grateful for a new paradigm.
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🤔 I often click on a story on the
@nytimes
homepage *because* of the byline. A byline is more than just a name; it speaks to an entire body of work, and to the breadth and depth of a reporter’s knowledge.
Among the many changes with the new NYT homepage: Reporter bylines are gone. But names of OP-ED writers still there.
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Such an important lesson: sometimes the best time to dig into a story is when everyone else thinks it’s over. “There were all of these puzzle pieces out there, and when you put [them] together, with the passage of time, there was this really damning story”
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Such an important lesson for journalists:
@nhannahjones
on why she uses the term "enslaved person" rather than “slave", and “enslaver” instead of “slave owner.”
We are shaping narratives. The words we use matter deeply.
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What will this bleak time be called when it's all over?
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In case anyone still has any doubt that we have two systems of justice: Texas AG Ken Paxton didn’t just flee his home to avoid being served a subpoena. He’s also been under indictment for tax fraud for seven years, but has never been brought to trial.
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This Didion quote, at the end of
@parul_sehgal
’s beautiful appraisal of her work, is breathtaking.
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I can't get this line out of my head: "When you will be attacking us, you will see our faces--not our backs, but our faces."
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Imagine calling 911 to report a crime only to find that your *choice of words* indicated guilt—all according to a pseudoscience first developed by a small-town cop, then promoted by the FBI, and finally weaponized by prosecutors.
New from
@BrettMmurphy
:
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There’s a very fine line between spectacular writing that inspires me and writing that is so spectacular that it’s demoralizing.
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Patton Oswalt's wife died before completing her book on the Golden State Killer. So Oswalt recruited two writers "to comb through her handwritten notes and the roughly 3,500 files on her computer and piece together the story she set out to tell."
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A reminder to not take even the smallest joys for granted.
UPDATE: Paul Hildwin was freed today after 35 years in prison (29 on death row) in Florida. He said he was most looking forward to feeling grass under his bare feet for the first time in decades — and here he is doing exactly that. Join us in welcoming him home!
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The past year has changed us in ways that I don’t think we’ll fully understand until this is over. When I saw all the empty shelves at my Texas grocery store today, I reflexively panicked (even though we have enough food) because it reminded me of the early days of the pandemic.
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My house has been silent for nearly an hour because both my kids decided—spontaneously—to read, and are now sitting in a pillow fort they built, immersed in their books. I’ve dreamed of this day for years.
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This seems like a good moment to point out that Texas attorney general Ken Paxton has been under indictment for fraud for SEVEN YEARS. (Eight years, this July.)
Still hasn't stood trial. Totally normal stuff.
Just a stunning hearing. Investigators now listing crimes they believe Paxton has committed, including ones that are impeachable offenses in Texas Constitution.
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What happened when a white police officer tried to de-escalate an encounter with a black man holding a gun, rather than shoot him? The cop was fired. The man with the gun? Shot by other cops. The gun? It wasn't loaded. A shattering and monumental story:
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FIFTY YEARS.
For possessing cocaine residue. And stealing cigarettes.
Our client Carl Stephens was convicted in 1993 of possessing cocaine residue & stealing cigarettes - acts for which he received a 50-year sentence without the possibility of parole. On Wednesday, after 26 years of imprisonment, he walked free. Happy Liberation Day Mr. Stephens!
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Please send this story to anyone you know who’s not taking COVID-19 seriously.
@lizziepresser
’s account of what one Louisiana respiratory therapist is seeing in the ICU is straight out of a horror movie. It’s hard to read, but that’s the point.
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This thread, by one of the best investigative reporters I know, lays out exactly which questions reporters should be asking about the Texas detention centers where kids are being held. (Are these contractors allowed to use restraints? Which lawmakers have taken their money?)👇🏻
Cheering on my fellow
#Texas
#journos
from Nashville (where I've got a delayed flite to
@DallasLoveField
). As a reader, I want a map with where the immigrant kids are, name of contractor, how much paid so far this year by fed taxpayers, how many kids detained.
#makeithappen
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We’re finally back in our house with heat, power & water. Not feeling like we’re freezing to death is a small miracle. Our water isn’t safe to drink & we’re a ways from hot showers (our water heater broke), but we’re lucky. Many Texans are cold, hungry & gathering snow for water.
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Remember the bizarrely self-serving + nearly identical thank-you notes that the Austin Police Dept claimed to have received amid calls reform? To see what the cards said inside,
@LeifReigstad
filed a public record request. Then things got really weird.
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.
@ProPublica
’s standards editor,
@dsorbara
, sent this to the staff today with the reminder, “Don’t jilt other punctuation.” 🏆👏
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I keep hoping there will be a day, one day, when I'm cleaning out my closet, and I come across a box of N95 masks...and I shake my head slowly in amazement, like I've just come across an old high school photo, and I can hardly remember what that faraway time was like.
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My kids are currently acting out a trial with their Legos. The first witness is named Mr. Popsicle.
My son, playing the defense attorney, cross-examining Mr. Popsicle: “But how could you have seen the crime when you were IN SOMEONE’S MOUTH??”
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This was what so many magazine profiles of women--always written by men--used to be like.
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BREAKING: Joe Bryan, the subject of my 2018
@propublica
-
@NYTmag
investigation, will be paroled. The Texas Board of Pardons & Paroles denied him parole 7x before, even though the forensic expert who testified against him admitted his conclusions were wrong.
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Fireworks are fun unless you're a dog, a dog owner, a child, a parent, or you like to sleep.
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My husband has jury duty today, which reminded me of woman I saw, years ago, who exclaimed during jury selection, “It’s my lifelong dream to be on a jury! I’m so, so excited to be here!” She was the very first person struck from the jury pool.
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Me, this morning, to my kids, while pointing at the New York Times Magazine: “Look—that’s my name!”
Kids: “Can we have waffles?”
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This peaceful protest outside the Austin Police Dept is by far the largest I’ve seen in 20+ years of covering criminal justice here.
Right next to the police dept, protestors shut down I-35, a longtime symbol of our city’s segregated history. It runs due north to Minneapolis.
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If you haven't seen the full 8-minute video of the Starbucks arrest, please watch. Law enforcement clearly escalated the situation. Watch as one officer becomes increasingly agitated, while the two men remain calm. This is what bad policing looks like.
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My career was made possible by the fact that I did 2 unpaid magazine internships in my early 20s. Only reason I could was because I had a free place to stay (my mother's NYC apartment). That led me to where I am today. These opportunities must be accessible to all & must be paid.
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I will never grow comfortable with the tiny, awkward lag time between saying goodbye on Zoom and logging off
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Can we have a period of re-socialization when this is all over? I just ran into a woman in my (almost always empty) office and I nearly screamed.
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In the 1960s, my mom went to her local paper for a job. She was cat-called as she walked through the newsroom & treated like a joke by the editor who interviewed her. She ended up putting my dad through law school & going to law school herself. She would’ve been a great reporter.
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In all seriousness, I wish the Pulitzer board would recognize The Onion in some way for posting this story every single time a mass shooting occurs. This is writing with moral purpose.
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Guess who started running pandemic simulations on Feb. 2--our government, or Texas' largest grocery store chain?
Terrific reporting by
@dansolomon
&
@paulaforbes
.
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Some perspective, for anyone who needs it today: I was feeling pretty down in the dumps about this Thanksgiving until I got a text from someone who's spending his first Thanksgiving out of prison since the Reagan administration. His message? "We are blessed!"
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The secret to writing a great magazine story (or book, or screenplay) has apparently been sitting in my third grader’s language arts notebook all fall.
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“This is a GREAT start!”
What sounds like a COMPLIMENT but really isn’t a COMPLIMENT?
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Many years ago, while doing a phone interview with Wes Anderson, I asked if he had screened his latest film for Pauline Kael, as he famously did with Rushmore. There was a long pause on the other end of the line. Then Wes Anderson said, "Pauline Kael is dead."
One time as an intern covering a chili cookoff I mistakenly wrote that volunteers took 2 hour shits instead of shifts and it MADE IT TO PRINT. I lowkey cried but my editors laughed and hung up the clip in the office. Reporters, join me in sharing ur cringe, IT’S THE HOLIDAYS.
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Earlier this week, I loaded up a tablet with news apps, gave it to my kids & said they had to find one story each day to discuss with me. They were not thrilled. “No games?”
Today, my 9-year-old, eyes wide: “Did you know 100 million people didn’t vote in the last election??”
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This is monstrous. Brown was a key prosecution witness in the Amber Guyger trial, and he was Botham Jean's neighbor. At the very least, two innocent black men who lived next to each other are now dead--one murdered in his home, and one murdered just outside his home.
Joshua Brown was shot in his mouth & chest. He was exiting his car at his apt when he was ambushed & shot at close range. His mother asked my office to help find out who murdered her son. She suspects foul play. He had no known enemies. He worked for a living. We need answers.
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Last week, I mentioned that I saw
@rtraister
deliver a barn burner of a speech about how women have been silenced and written out of history. Here is the speech in full. My new motto: "Consider what the most powerful least want you to do, and then do it."
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I dream of a day when The New Yorker web site remembers, from one month to the next, that I’ve subscribed to the magazine for more than half my life.
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Q. Which of the following Americans died in the greatest numbers from gun violence in 2017?
1. on-duty police officers
2. active-duty military personnel
3. children ages 5-18 years old
A: children ages 5-18 years old
h/t
@MarshallProj
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Curtis Flowers would still be on Mississippi's death row if not for
@madeleinebaran
& team. Kudos to every attorney & reporter who worked to undo this injustice.
If only Mr. Flowers' mother had lived long enough to see this day.
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Narrative nonfiction writers who have written books: What one thing do you wish you'd known when you started working on your first book? What do you wish you'd done differently?
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Last night, I climbed into bed with a book at 9:30 p.m., instead of doomscrolling until 1 a.m. I highly recommend.
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The publication I'm reading now more than ever before: The Atlantic. Its pandemic coverage is consistently superb.
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REPORTER FRIEND: Any advice for steeling yourself before making a difficult phone call?
ME: I write a script, dry heave, then call. And then I'm a little relieved if they don't pick up.
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My new sign-off: "I hope you are well, despite everything."
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Perhaps I should write an addendum to my book's acknowledgments section, in which I list all the records custodians, attorneys, and other public officials who have stood in the way of me getting public records that I'm legally entitled to have.
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This was one of the most difficult stories I’ve ever had to write. Imagine, if you can, that your child is murdered. Then imagine being convicted of killing your child, after bloodstain-pattern analysts insist that your story doesn’t add up. My latest:
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