Pivot to Podcasting: A Q&A with Jess McHugh
With so much uncertainty in the media industry, it's always useful to pick up a new skill and pay attention to the sectors that are growing. According to Pew Research Center, podcast listenership continues to increase. Younger generations, in particular, are gravitating toward the...
June 17, 2026
From Layoff To Pulitzer: A Q&A With Investigative Reporter Yael Grauer
In May 2026, independent investigative reporter and longtime Study Hall member Yael Grauer, alongside a team of full-time reporters at the Associated...
May 27, 2026
A Very Specific Period Piece: On "The Scoop" by Erin Van Der Meer
The Scoop by Erin Van Der Meer. Grand Central Publisher, 320 pages. 2026. The latest episode of Serial is playing in your wired earbuds. You just...
May 18, 2026
Who Gets to Make a Magazine in 2026?
When Pitchfork was acquired by Condé Nast in 2015, then-director of editorial operations Brandon Stosuy decided that this new direction would provide fewer opportunities for the kind of work that felt meaningful to him. It seemed “like suddenly things were going to change a lot. The magazine...
May 4, 2026
How to Write a Compelling Health Feature: A Q&A With Sofia Quaglia
Most of us can relate to turning to the internet — sometimes referred to as “Dr. Google,” or these days some prefer to visit “Nurse ChatGPT” — for guidance in the midst of a health scare. Sofia Quaglia, an award-winning science journalist who has been published in The Guardian, the BBC, and...
April 27, 2026
The New York Review of Finance Welcomes You Into Its Bubble
The founders of the New York Review of Finance (NYRF) are not in the business of offering investment tips. They are not CFAs; they do not clock late nights at banks or funds. Lest there be any confusion, the print-only publication’s cheeky tagline-cum-disclaimer, which appears on the front page of its...
April 13, 2026
No Easy Manswers: At the Masculinity in Literature Panel
If you’re worried about young straight men’s place in literary production, or young white men’s, or young straight white American men’s; or if the question bedeviling you is why men don’t read, or read less than women but more than sometimes reported, or read performatively; or if, say, you...
February 25, 2026
A Billionaire and His Mess: On Gabriel Sherman’s “Bonfire of the Murdochs”
On a frigid, gray January day in Midtown Manhattan, shuffling down Sixth Avenue, I pass one of the many stone slabs that comprise Rockefeller Center. A news ticker, hued hyperlink blue, advertises news out of the World Economic Forum at Davos. An American flag waves. But the lettered signage...
February 18, 2026
The Afterlife of Dinah Brooke
Dinah Brooke is in her early nineties; she’s never heard of a “trad-wife.” When I begin describing the phenomenon, she shakes her head in the Zoom window. “ I’m beginning to see how incredibly...
February 12, 2026
The Essentials of Profile Writing: A Q&A with Jess McHugh
At holidays, as a journalist, family friends sometimes come to me with suggestions for whom I should profile next. Maybe their neighbor who...
January 26, 2026
An Obituary for Farmers’ Almanac
It is possible to stop a wound from hemorrhaging by applying a mixture of water and the oil that collects in a tobacco pipe stem. The highest peak in “Indian Territory” is Sugarloaf Mountain, at 2,600 feet. A cupful of strong coffee will remove the odor of onions from the breath. When the...
December 15, 2025
Why the Music Critics Keep Writing
It was easy to interpret that garish green affront as a harbinger of doom. Rolling Stone, once the magazine of record in music, had launched a “homepage takeover,” complete with a matcha-moss colorway, to celebrate the release of Taylor Swift’s “The Life of a Showgirl.” My first impulse was to deem...
December 1, 2025
How L.A. Taco Filled a Gap in Los Angeles’ Media Landscape
L.A. Taco Editor in Chief Javier Cabral will never forget the Friday in June when he watched a protester get run over by a U.S. Immigration and...
November 10, 2025
Mathew Rodriguez On How To Write An Impactful Op-Ed
Writer, editor, and educator Mathew Rodriguez will teach a digital course on opinion writing for Study Hall on October 24. Rodriguez began his career...
October 20, 2025