Middleboro Review et al

Compelling, ambitious reads you can’t afford to miss. When database editor Steven Rich gets involved in an investigation, revelations almost always follow. This week Rich, database editor Ted Mellnik and reporters Wesley Lowery and Kimbriell Kelly delivered a blockbuster look at how often homicides go unsolved in 50 of America's largest and most violent cities. In some neighborhoods in Indianapolis, Baltimore and Omaha, arrests are rarely made. With the help of Post researchers, designers and editors, they mapped and analyzed where those killings occur. Rich, who has worked on two Pulitzer Prize-winning projects in his five years at The Post, said the idea for "Murder with Impunity" began almost two years ago with a story about Chicago's spike in homicides. What he, Lowery and Kelly realized, he said, was that "Chicago was getting really bad at solving homicides." In analyzing 25 years worth of data, Rich learned that the solve rate had fal...

Compelling, ambitious reads you can’t afford to miss. Nearly all the characters written about by national enterprise writer Eli Saslow are deeply flawed, whether they are drug addicts or white supremacists or hurricane survivors. That was the case when Saslow went to Gillette, Wyo., last month to write about 16-year-old Moriah Engdahl and her father, Alan Engdahl. In a conservative, gun-loving community, Moriah was defying her dad and nearly everyone else she knew by pushing for tighter gun laws. Alan was a complicated guy who'd served jail time for methamphetamine distribution. At times, Saslow said, he was bombastic, homophobic and racist. But he was also self-aware and generous   —  willing to help others in need. "He's taking care of his daughter and all these other lost souls," said Saslow, who won a 2014 Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting for a series on food stamps. "He l...

Compelling, ambitious reads you can’t afford to miss. National political reporter Mary Jordan first wrote about Melania Trump in 2015 when her husband was campaigning for the Republican presidential nomination. This week, Jordan teamed up with White House reporter Josh Dawsey and Reliable Source columnist Emily Heil to examine Melania's complicated life as the wife of the president. "She's only been in this country 22 years, and she's now the first lady," said Jordan, a Pulitzer Prize-winning former foreign correspondent. "It's quite an American story." Melania's 16 months as first lady have been mostly low key and sometimes nearly invisible. With guidance from Style editor Krissah Thompson, who covered Michelle Obama and the East Wing of the White House during the Obama presidency, Jordan, Dawsey and Heil set out to understand the role Melania was playing. Or as Jordan put it: "Where is she, what'...

Compelling, ambitious reads you can’t afford to miss. When national arts reporter Geoff Edgers started working on his penetrating look at years of sexual abuse allegations involving R&B superstar R. Kelly, he was worried he wouldn't be able to uncover anything new. Kelly's behavior, which included marriage to then-15-year-old singer Aaliyah and a video that appeared to show him having sex with a 14-year-old, was well known. But Edgers, with encouragement from his editor, Christine Ledbetter, focused his reporting on the industry that enabled Kelly's career to flourish amid one disturbing scandal after another.  "How do you ignore something like this for so long?" Edgers said he asked himself. "How does that happen? You trace it back to the money, and who are the people who benefited?" Edgers, who also hosts a podcast called Edge of Fame, called, emailed and texted the people who knew the answers to those questions dozens of time...