1.
“The Three Arrows Guys Who Couldn’t Shoot Straight,” August 15–28
For New York’s latest cover story, Jen Wieczner documented the implosion of Su Zhu and Kyle Davies’s multibillion-dollar crypto fund. Fortune’s Jeff Roberts said the report was “every bit as delicious as I expected.” Protocol called it “almost too unbelievable, and you can already sense the limited-time HBO series or feature film Hollywood producers might try to cook up from these details.” Noting Zhu and Davies’s time at Andover, the Los Angeles Times’ Matt Brennan wrote, “From the boarding school that brought you the Iraq War, a new and somehow even more astounding scam.” For Futurism, Maggie Harrison wrote, “3AC’s success was built on two of the flimsiest things around: social media influence and heavy borrowing.” Reporter Nick Statt tweeted that Wieczner had produced “an incredibly well written and structured feature on what happened to crypto in 2022 through the lens of the Three Arrows Capital combustion. It’s a historic business failure that will have ripple effects on global finance for years and years.” Corey Hoffstein, the co-founder of Newfound Research, said, “You see this all the time with fraud in the finance industry. Due diligence short-cuts because of business pressures and a hand-wavey belief that ‘for them to get this big, someone must’ve done due diligence on them at some point.’ ” @SaffhoArtSht wrote, “A wild read following one of this century’s many massive apparent investment scams. This one, however, managed to be almost entirely responsible for a major crash across an entire trading industry and subsequently the loss of a trillion dollars.” But John Dickson quarreled with crypto mogul Sam Bankman-Fried’s claim in the article that Three Arrows had driven 80 percent of the broader decline in crypto markets: “Just ridiculous. Also completely goes against him saying purely macro forces are the reason for this … not shady actors.”
2.
“The Last, Lonely Days of Ivana Trump,” August 15–28
Nina Burleigh chronicled Ivana Trump’s lavish life up until the moment it was cut short. Amanda Rivkin praised the story as “not quite a profile nor is it an obit, though being of neither genre and straddling both, it is something quite spectacularly human in so many ways.” Michael Hirschorn agreed that “this is some elegant writing,” adding, “It captures her essential ridiculousness but also her humanity. Also, smartly avoids any of the conspiracy mania that spread after her death.” Steve Johnson wrote, “I was never an Ivana fan, but this is an exceptionally well-reported piece on her life post-Donald.” Political reporter Nathan McDermott said, “Something that stands out is how many people genuinely enjoyed their friendship with her, in comparison to Donald. It’s questionable whether he has any actual friends in his cohort.” Natalia Mehlman Petrzela tweeted, “Read this … both for the insights on the unique spectacle of Trump Life and on broader themes of aging, beauty, desire, and luxury.”
3.
“The Voice of New York Is Drill,” August 15–28
“The Voice of New York Is Drill” mapped the history, key players, and sound of the city’s most important music scene. Musician Jonathon Hackett wrote, “This was a really, really great read and the photos are incredible. Drill is some of most interesting music being put out right now and if you aren’t familiar with it (or if you’ve only heard a certain mayor talk about it being a ‘problem’), this is a good intro.” Music journalist David Drake, however, criticized the feature’s discussion of drill’s sound: “Like most pieces written about Chicago drill by people who never much listened to it, it ignores the actual origins of the groove.” In a letter to New York, D. Valle-Comin argued, “Don’t glamorize violence. People literally get killed over this shit. I live in Chicago and this was such a gloss over the amount of killing that goes on over this and diss tracks.” For the project, Simon van Zuylen-Wood reported on the murder of the up-and-coming drill rapper Jayquan McKenley. “This is more than a profile of a sweethearted teen,” Peter Rubin wrote for Longreads. “It’s a sober, neutral-minded tour through the fallout of the drill scene’s uniquely inflammatory recipe … It’s not a fun read, but it’s a necessary one.” Hunter College sociology professor CalvinJohn Smiley added, “Drill is really a complex genre about pain, health, trauma, community, and highlights how lack of social investment in communities spurns violence. Like their forebearers drill artists are the griots of this generation!”
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