Everyone is pretty aghast and/or in stitches over today's weird and kinda embarrassing escapade by the New York Times public editor, Arthur Brisbane: "I’m looking for reader input on whether and when New York Times news reporters should challenge 'facts' that are asserted by newsmakers they write about." Not just when; whether! A list of people currently making fun of this runs from editors of city papers to New Yorker correspondents to totally random unemployed people to... well, the Times staffers are all sitting on their hands right now. GOSH, HOW THAT MUST BURN. READ MORE

"Covering a fire is usually an exciting event. But it doesn't come nearly as often as you might think. Amid the turmoil and confusion, the reporter must be able to think clearly and quickly, and he must get his facts accurately. Assignments of this type may keep the reporter out in bad weather for many hours of hard, tiresome work. But there's a real thrill in seeing your own byline over a story when it's in print." Also noted: reporting is hard for girls. [Via]

Scott Raab’s new memoir The Whore of Akron: One Man’s Search for the Soul of LeBron James isn’t really about basketball. It’s about addiction and sobriety, marriage and divorce, childhood and parenthood, loyalty and autonomy. In 15 years at Esquire—and five years at GQ before that—the 59-year-old Cleveland native has, as he writes in the book, “shared cunnilingus tips with Robert Downey Jr., got tattoos with Dennis Rodman, once smoked a bone with Tupac, twice did nothing with Larry David, and visited with Phil Spector in his castle in Alhambra three times, all without gunplay...[and] even went to Bill Murray's house once for an Oscar party." He’s also responsible for hands-down the most insightful and exhaustive reporting on the rebuilding of the World Trade Center. We spoke at his home in Glen Ridge, New Jersey. READ MORE

The New York Times thinks it maybe saw something... so it's saying something. In a Sunday afternoon post titled "Video Appears to Show Wall Street Protesters Being Pepper-Sprayed," the paper's City Room blog embedded a video—originally posted by YouTube user USLAWdotcom—and offered a delicate take on the proceedings. READ MORE

Early this year, John Patrick Leary, a professor of American literature at Wayne State University, published a story in Guernica called "Detroitism" about, primarily, the two competing journalistic and artistic narratives about the Motor City. READ MORE

As noted, this Techcrunch story on a new startup called Skillshare was assembled in a highly unusual manner. (Or a very usual manner.)

"A few weeks after the issue was on the stands the phone woke me up at home on a Sunday morning with news that Biggie had been killed. I guess everyone remembers where they were when they found out. I turned on MTV, and watched the news coverage as his words—the ones about wanting to move past controversies, live a slower life, and show the world how he’d grown as a person—were repeatedly quoted from the story. It was all so surreal and senseless. I’ll never profess to have known Christopher Wallace, I just interviewed him for a magazine. But I think what I wrote captures things he felt at the time, that upon reflection I think were always a part of his music even at its Ready To Die-bleakest: a belief in the power of artistry to make life—despite its stress and adversity—something still worthy of celebration." READ MORE