It's 2024. Embrace substance and forgo the fleeting.
You will get bombarded with information, disinformation, misinformation and more this year. Depth Perception will help you make it through.
Avoid the ephemeral; invest in the unforgettable
As we enter another election year, our digital landscapes, our lifelines to the world as it is happening, are set to become battlegrounds of information (as well as misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation). We’ll be bombarded by a seemingly endless stream of social posts, video clips, and hot takes; while each snippet of news, fleeting and ephemeral blips of information in our hectic lives, battles for our attention before vanishing into the sea of forgettable online content.
For better or for worse, this is simply the nature of news media in 2024: underfunded, often forgettable, and built on an incentive structure that rewards people for telling them what they want to hear rather than what they need to hear.
There is one safe haven from the information deluge: longform investigative pieces, stories that have the power to draw our attention to the not-yet-known and create real, lasting change by uncovering mistreatment or wrongdoing. They are a respite from the relentless pace of the rest of the news and invite us to engage more deeply with information, to immerse ourselves in the context and rich narratives crafted by experts and investigative reporters. The power of longform journalism is that when it’s done right, it has staying power.
For better or for worse, this is simply the nature of news media in 2024: underfunded, often forgettable, and built on an incentive structure that rewards people for telling them what they want to hear rather than what they need to hear.
Need more evidence? Let’s examine four examples of longform journalism that sent ripples around the world.
A great, recent example is ProPublica’s 2021 investigation into welfare restrictions in the southwest U.S. As a result of ProPublica’s work, some of the states implicated in the reporting have reworked their systems. And as of December, the impact of this story even reached the federal level, with the Biden administration “quietly moving to overhaul welfare” on the back of ProPublica’s reporting. The families helped by these changes may never realize the impact of this investigation, but that doesn’t alter one simple fact: It was journalists uncovering how difficult it was for people to access welfare who sparked these changes.
The initial reporting from Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein on the 1972 Watergate break-in didn’t prevent Richard Nixon’s re-election. In fact, he won in a massive landslide, despite the controversy. But ultimately what the Washington Post reporters discovered derailed the U.S. president’s second term, leading to his resignation two years and one week after their first Pulitzer-winning dual byline was printed.
Miami Herald reporter Julie Brown’s 2018 investigation into Jeffrey Epstein took the financier down, putting him behind bars and leading to the resignation of then-Secretary of Labor Alex Acosta. More than five years after Brown’s first story on the since-deceased sexual predator, the ripple effects continue to be felt. Just this week, new names associated with Epstein are scheduled to be released.
The New York Times’s 2015 investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server turned “her emails” into a major campaign issue during the 2016 election. Five years later, a 2020 Times investigation into Donald Trump’s taxes served as a basis for some of the former president’s ongoing legal woes. These are pieces of journalism that helped shape the world, for better or for worse.
These works aren’t mere collections of facts spread over a page. They’re tapestries crafted by investigation, storytelling, and editing. They are narrative pieces that let readers peek behind the curtains of power, and they provide us with insights and perspectives that are often overlooked and ignored elsewhere in the news.
By the end of 2024, one-third of all U.S. newspapers that operated in 2005 will have shut down, leaving more than 200 counties (that’s 7% of all U.S. counties) without a local paper. This means fewer investigative stories. This means more unchecked corruption. This means less meaningful work for talented reporters around the country. And that’s precisely why it’s more important than ever that we support the good work being done. If there’s hope for turning a dying industry around, it’s in longform.
It’s January 6, Again. It’s January 6, Still.
The American far-right movement culminated on January 6, 2021… but did it end there? In the three years since the bloody insurgency at the U.S. Capitol, and still we can’t answer that question.
If you haven’t listened to Long Shadow, the best place to start today is by jumping right to the second season’s finale, Jan. 6: Day of the Rope. In this episode, host Garrett Graff provides an unforgettable tick-tock of the attack and wrestles with what this moment means for America.
Listen to Long Shadow wherever you get your podcasts.
In an age where news organizations face innumerable challenges — from dwindling revenues to bad-faith accusations of bias — longform journalism can and will continue to exist as a beacon of quality. And as we approach the 2024 presidential election, navigating the highs and lows of the campaign, let us remember the power that comes with delving deeper and seeking out stories that require more than a fleeting glance, the ones that need our time and attention. In these longform pieces, we find journalism at its best and most profoundly human.
In 2024, we at Depth Perception will continue to find these stories for you, our readers. We will find them, we will share them, and we will share the stories behind the stories, bringing you interviews with reporters and authors. Whether it’s one of the pieces published elsewhere or one of our Long Lead originals — like Emily Sohn’s brilliant look at the life of former Sports Illustrated writer Virginia Kraft or Linda Rodriguez McRobbie’s “The People vs. Rubber Bullets” — we will be here for you, our readers, through it all. —Parker Molloy
Love what we do? Want us to change it up?
We want to know what you think. Help us make Depth Perception better by responding to our reader survey by Friday, January 5.
You don’t need me to tell you that things are terrible right now. At top of mind are the horrors of the Israel-Hamas war and the nearly two-year-old conflict in Ukraine. The global climate crisis is only getting worse, too. Here in the U.S., though the economy is by most measures healthy, everything is so damned expensive. COVID is surging again. Crime isn’t but feels like it is. The media, as a business, continues to crater. Twitter (X, if you insist) is more of a racist, Nazi-filled cesspool than ever, which is saying something. It’s dark before 5 p.m., and — ugh — we’re entering what promises to be the nastiest and most divisive election year yet.
With that table set, there’s never been a better time for a palette cleanser. To get your head ready for a fresh start in 2024, I’ve picked five of last year’s most delightful profiles, about people both famous and not. Enjoy! — Mark Yarm
“Everybody Knows Flo From Progressive. Who Is Stephanie Courtney?” by Caity Weaver (The New York Times Magazine, Nov. 25, 2023)
Times Magazine staff writer Caity Weaver wrote one of my favorite low-stakes profiles of 2022, a funny and touching piece about Jackass cast member Wee Man. She brings the same spirit to this feature on Stephanie Courtney, better known as Flo from the Progressive insurance commercials. It’s hilariously written (there’s a whole bit about the pricey caviar the two shared at dinner) and expertly draws out the fundamental tension of Courtney’s career: By letting go of her artistic ambitions — she once dreamed of SNL stardom — she’s become more successful, and seemingly happier, than 99% of working actors.
“Casual Luke Rides the Big Wave” by Gabriella Paiella (GQ, June 13, 2023)
GQ’s Gabriella Paiella is one of the funniest, sharpest magazine writers working today. And this profile, of Hawaiian lifeguard Luke Shepardson — the unlikely winner of 2023’s Eddie Aikau Big Wave Invitational, surfing’s Super Bowl — is Paiella at her best. To wit: “Luke, by the way, is known as ‘Casual Luke.’ In Hawaii. Which is like being called ‘Neurotic Matt’ on the island of Manhattan.” Unlike Stephanie Courtney, Shepardson isn’t a big talker, but there are similar themes at play here. Fame hasn’t changed him appreciably; he’s pretty damn content with the life he has, lifeguarding, raising a family, and catching great waves.
“Dril Is Everyone. More Specifically, He’s a Guy Named Paul.” by Nate Rogers (The Ringer, Apr. 12, 2023)
If you’re extremely (or perhaps even moderately) online, you already are familiar with Dril. As writer Nate Rogers puts it so well, he’s Weird Twitter’s “undisputed poet laureate of shitposting, the architect of a satire so effective that it has become impossible to tell when Dril stopped mocking the way people speak online and when we, instead, started speaking like Dril online.” But most people don’t know that Dril is actually a mid-thirties guy from Los Angeles named Paul Dochney who gives his first in-person, out-of-character interview here. Reading this story now can’t help but make one wistful for pre-Elon Twitter.
“The Case for Hanging Out” by Dan Kois (Slate, Feb. 15, 2023)
If one of your New Year’s resolutions is to socialize more, then you must read this story. Dan Kois flew to Burlington, VT, to chill with Sheila Liming, author of Hanging Out: The Radical Power of Killing Time, which makes the case for what so many adults are lacking these days: unstructured hang time. The piece is an exercise, Kois points out wryly, “engineered for the purposes of exploring ideas about unforced, natural socializing.” And it’s a resounding success: The two have a joyful time eating tacos, running errands, listening to records, downing tiki drinks, and swapping life stories.
“The Dave Matthews Guide to Living and Dying” by Alex Pappademas (GQ, May 18, 2023)
I don’t care much for Dave Matthews’s music, outside of his undeniable late-’90s hit “Crash Into Me,” but I always thought he seemed like a decent guy. This excellent profile by Alex Pappademas not only confirmed that feeling, it amplified it. I appreciated how self-effacing Matthews is (“Because he’s Dave Matthews, he has spent time in the presence of undeniably cool people, but the stories he tells about meeting them inevitably take the shape of jokes in which Matthews’s own uncoolness is the punch line”) and was inspired by the unshakably positive outlook he has on life — including his own eventual demise.