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Must-reads of the week

Somaly Mam, the race beat and America's 'records of carnage.'
July 18, 2014

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Culled from CJR’s own stories, plus the frequently updated “Must-reads from around the Web,” our staff recommendations for the best pieces of journalism (and other miscellany) on the internet, here are your can’t-miss must-reads of the past week:

Who gets shot in America: What I learned compiling records of carnage for The New York Times (Raw Story) – “A year and a half ago, after the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT, Joe Nocera, an op-ed columnist at The New York Times, asked me, an editorial assistant at the newspaper, to find out who gets shot in America every day.”

For Venezuelan media, death by a thousand cuts (Foreign Policy) – “The government has been restricting access to newsprint, forcing newspapers like El Universal to shrink dramatically.”

In the rise of race beats, echoes of history (CJR) – Reporters devoted to covering race and ethnicity find stories most others miss.

A quest to ban the ‘R-word’ from a high-school newspaper nets national attention (CJR) – The editors of the Playwickian, in Bucks County, PA, are not backing down, which may ultimately lead to a federal case.

Teenagers are not “toddlers with hormones” (Salon) – Contrary to what a recent bunch of articles are saying.

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Somaly Mam, Nick Kristof, and journalism’s hero problem (CJR) – Reporters should not abandon the story of child trafficking in Cambodia, just because its ‘hero’ has fallen.

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The Editors are the staffers of the Columbia Journalism Review.