The Aug 2 issue cover story was "The Case Against Summer Vacation" by David Von Drehle about the academic damage that's incurred for kids away from learning for three months. Reminded me of both the Von Drehle piece "The Myth About Boys" (posted on here) and other stories I've seen about how lower income students often fall behind during the summer. Attributed cause for this is they don't get as much opportunity for out of classroom learning as do kids from better off families.Also from this issue was "Are Hyperlocals Replacing Traditional Newspapers?" which covered the wave of new journalism startups over the last few years. Interesting stuff that brought to mind this blog post from Feb 2009 about and linking to the Time cover story "How to Save Your Newspaper".
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In the same category of "Time piece that makes me think of past writing" was the Aug 9 issue profile of Ford Motor Company under CEO Alan Mulally titled "How to Make Cars And Make Money Too". Nothing terribly exciting in this particular story, but it does follow up on past writing and stories about Ford I've linked to.Finally, two other stories about interesting topics from this issue that I wanted to make note of...
- "Funny or Die: How the Web Is Changing Comedy" about the popular website.
-"Building a Better Playground" about the idea of kids play areas having loose items for use rather than simply stuff to slide on and climb.
Nothing in any of these that stood out to me as great writing, but lots of cool topics covered.
