As part of my new year’s media diet resolution, I’m seeking out a broader range of news than the platform algorithms have been serving up to me. So each day, I’m looking for five interesting stories from somwhere other than trending story lists.
- “DNA Helps New York Police Solve Infamous 1994 Rape Case” (New York Times) – After a woman, a black lesbian Yale graduate, reported her rape in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, the New York Daily News‘s star columnist Mike McAlary wrote at the time, “Everyone who heard the woman’s story about the alleged rape was calling it a hoax,” claiming that she had staged it “to deliver a first-person speech on her own rape” at a LGBT rally. Today the Brooklyn D.A. announced new DNA testing technology matched evidence of the crime to a 67-year-old serial rapist who, though the statute of limitations on the 1994 attack has expired, is serving a 75-year sentence at Sing Sing on other convictions.
- “Dancing to Russia’s Tune in Syria” (Foreign Policy) –
Colum Lynch reports on how Russia is taking the diplomatic lead in Syria as regime leader Bashar al-Assad sweeps up the last pockets of resistance in the brutal civil war — largely due to American indifference. - “‘A beacon of hope’: Former Baltimore councilwoman becomes mentor to teens who attacked her” (Washington Post) – In December 2016, 80-year-old Baltimore City Councilwoman Rochelle “Rikki†Spector was sent to the hospital after a carjacking in her own parking garage by two young teenage boys. In the year since, she has sought to mentor the boys and joined the board of the non-profit that seeks to help at-risk youth.
- “Muddling Through Isn’t Enough” (Jacobin) – Reviewing David Runciman’s book, The Confidence Trap: A History of Democracy in Crisis from World War I to the Present, Chris Bickerton grapples with the argument that no leader, no matter how idealistic, can “take democracy out of the present and pin it to any particular vision of the future.”
- “‘Fire and Fury’ from Canada: It’s Not About Trump. Or Michael Wolff.” (New York Times) – Randall Hansen, a professor of political science at the University of Toronto, is enjoying a surge in sales of his book Fire and Fury: The Allied Bombing of Germany, 1942-1945 due to confused Amazon searchers. Because Trump “is threatening war constantly,” he hopes “a few people read about the horror of war.”