Hated to Death

It won the Pulitzer for a reason.

May 19, 2025

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Hi 👋 

Welcome back to The Lazy Reader, where we curate some of the best longform journalism from across the Internet ✨

Doomscrolling was a bit too difficult to break out of last week.

One of the stories in this list put in a pretty deep thinking mood (you’ll see which down below). And when I’m stuck in my head so much, it’s difficul to pull myself out and divert my attention to something more productive, like reading.

It didn’t help that work was again hectic, and there were a few things in my personal life that also got difficult.

But the longreads last week were still oh, so good. They might not have been as effective as they usually are in keeping me preoccupied, but that doesn’t mean that I didn’t enjoy them. (I did, very much so). And who knows, maybe they’ll work better for you and help you take your mind off things.

If you missed last week’s email, here are a few choice picks:

As with last week, please let me know what you think of the list this week by voting in the poll below.

Happy reading and see you again next Monday!

PS - Thank you to 1440 Media for supporting this week’s newsletter. It’s sponsors like them that make it possible for me to keep running these lists. Please, please consider clicking their ad link after the fold below. It’s free and easy, and it really helps me out. Thank you! 🙏 

Story in Spotlight

Right-Wing Media and the Death of an Alabama Pastor: An American Tragedy

Bubba Copeland was the heart and soul of his community—mayor, businessman. When a website exposed his deepest secrets, his life wasn’t the only thing that was destroyed.

Tragic. Absolutely tragic.

Was Bubba Copeland perfect? No. Was he a hypocrite? Maybe. Did he endanger his family and his community? Probably. Did he make some pretty dubious mistakes? Definitely. Some of his faults might even be borderline devastating—enough to ruin a person’s life for good.

But did he deserve what came his way? Absolutely not.

I work in the Media, but admittedly my audience is very niche. I write for a very specialized (and therefore small) sector. But even with my limited reach, I know that the responsibility I hold is extremely heavy. I go over my facts no less than three times everytime I publish something. It’s with this sense of duty and accuracy that I look at the actions of 1819 News—and I look at it with extreme disgust. I understand the impulse to use whatever platform you have to advance your own ideology. I think that’s fair. But not if you label it as news or as journalism, and definitely not if you use your reach to drum up hate against someone.

What 1819 News did was wrong and unethical and immoral. Full stop. What happed to Bubba is inexcusable. This shouldn’t be a controversial opinion. No self-proclaimed Media outfit should be doing this. In fact, no self-proclaimed human should be doing this.

But that’s enough of my ranting. Onto the more technical aspects of this piece.

This story was really comprehensively researched, and the writer even makes a point to show that he was forced into compassionate reportage by the people who were close to Copeland and who were protective of his name and legacy. (I feel like there’s a lesson to be learned there for all reporters). It might feel like the writer is attempting to salvage Bubba’s reputation, but partway through it becomes clear that he just wants to report the facts as they are and lay them in a logical order.

Prose was great, structure was reader-friendly. Nothing out of the ordinary, really, for top-notch journalism.

Long, but not excessively so. Can be a bit triggering though, so consider this your content warning. Maybe allot 1 hour at least.

PS - This one won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for feature writing. It’s not difficult to see why.

The Longform List

Easy favorite of mine, which is great because it doesn’t come from the usual suspects. I always love it when a small, relatively unknown outlet delivers an incredible longform experience.

In any case, this one made me think really hard. (And made me lose a few days of reading. You can blame this story for the shorter list this week). It touches on the perpetual tug-of-war between tradition and progress, between cultural respect and gentrification. And if you’re someone from a relatively underdeveloped neighborhood (or country, as in my case), then you know this tension really well.

Where do we draw the line between keeping a place true to itself versus uplifting it? What does it even mean, in the first place, to uplift a place? Is there any real need to steamroll over the things that make a place vibrant? Is that what constitutes progress?

It’s hard to read a story like this and not immediately resort to ridiculing—or rolling your eyes at—these people who we so easily dismiss as lunatics. But I think suspending that impulse is needed to enjoy this piece to it full extent. There’s a lot to learn from these communities that are so dedicated to their fringe beliefs. The writer himself can’t resist throwing a few pot-shots here and there, but I think he gets there in the end. You should read through this with as open of a mind that you can manage.

Another one of those articles that come from a lesser-known publication but can very easily rival the top outlets in terms of quality. For sure, the craziness of the story helps a lot—it’s probably among the most outlandish stories I’ve read in a long time. But it takes a writer of exceptional skill to give it the justice it deserves. I’d say Rachel Browne pulls it off perfectly here.

Fun story, if a bit ineffective in its storytelling. I feel like there was a big missed opportunity to build up tension and suspense here, but the writer instead chose to spoil the most pertinent aspects of a mystery pretty early on. Which I guess works to give this story its quirky, slightly cartoonish quality.

Really heartbreaking story about how a father’s love can so easily be twisted into obsession, warped into something so poisonous that it slowly kills off everything else around him. There’s a deep respect and admiration, of course, that comes with the dedication this father gave his son’s case. But there’s also a blunt, chronic pain that goes with watching him destroy everything else for the sake of it.

There’s a really good Radiolab episode about this. Which I think is the best endorsement for just how interesting a science story is. Good story overall—reporting is robust and storytelling is solid. I always just expect much more from the NYT, given how it positions itself as the premier media outfit. This story, unfortunately, fell short of those (admittedly) bloated expectations.

Something is wrong on the internet | Medium (James Bridle), Free

Been a while since a Medium piece impressed me enough to be put on this list. This one makes some pretty convincing arguments, but I think it could have been more convincing overall. Some parts felt a bit fear-monger-y, while in others, I felt like the writer’s examples fell a bit short and didn’t back his point as strongly as it could have. Still, he sounds the alarm on a very important matter—and I think it’s worth putting this story here for that alone.

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