If you're like us, you spent a lot of time this year reading words. But which words were the best words? (Not "amazeballs," for sure.) Here, each Gawker staffer recommends the best things he or she read this year—books, articles, blogs, comics and more.
The year-end listicle is a stressful affair. It's important: You are defining a moment in history. It's hard: You have to remember stuff that happened twelve whole months ago, which is multiple millennia in internet years. Finally, it has a strict deadline: If you procrastinate, then the work you've done will be rendered completely irrelevant at the stroke of midnight on January 1st.
Christopher Hitchens, the Clinton-loathing, religion-mocking, Kurd-loving, war-mongering, ball-waxing British drunk who contained multitudes and seemed to be insulting you somehow even when you agreed with him, which was precisely 59% of the time, has died of complications from esophageal cancer at the age of 62.
Horrible person Andrew Breitbart is fighting (again) with horrible person Glenn Beck, and while we know we should be feeling that soft warm joy that comes when two horrible people are engaged in a dispute, secretly we are sort of sad: we agree with Glenn Beck!
The feel-good story of the Christmas season: A news anchor in Chicago went on a rant about how Santa isn't real during her 9:00pm broadcast, brutally destroying the innocence of thousands of young Midwesteners.
Why is Simon Eroro of the Papua New Guinea Post-Courier a great reporter? He's willing to do anything to chase after a hot tip—even if it means only a snippet of news. Also, he underwent a circumcision to secure an interview.
A reporter from a CBS affiliate in Minnesota walks into a Chinatown butcher. No, this isn't the start of the joke, but what happened was unintentionally hilarious. The owner of the butcher shop isn't laughing, because he just had to fend off charges he was selling dog meat.
Joining the Occupy Wall Street protests has its dangers. You could get pepper-sprayed or end up in handcuffs. Or, as Brooklyn-based journalist Caitlin Curran explains, your boss could see a photo of you holding up a sign at a protest and fire you the next day.
In reading The American Spectator, the top-shelf, right-wing magazine, you might have spotted the byline of assistant editor Patrick Howley. Yesterday Intrepid Patrick joined up with anti-war protesters at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum not only to write about the goings-on but also—and this is the best part—"to mock and undermine" the protesters, as he admitted in his eventual report.
Meet Ortis Deley. You've probably never heard of him, but in England, he's fairly well known as the affable host of a TV gadget show. Channel 4 thought they'd give him a shot at the big leagues: Hosting the 2011 International Association of Athletics Federations World Championships in Daegu, South Korea — a major track and field meet that the network was airing for the first time, after 27 years of BBC coverage.
This photo of Watergate journalist Carl Bernstein attracting bumblebees in Beverly Hills raises questions.
Hey, has anyone seen Dutch stamp collector Willem van der Bijl? He went to North Korea in July to buy some of the country's stamps, and his family hasn't heard from him since. Oh! There he is! In the Pyongyang Times, extensively praising North Korean elections in a personal essay!
News of the World, the Rupert Murdoch-owned tabloid shut down last month over allegations of extensive illegal story-gathering practices, is now accused of hacking the voicemail of the mother of a murdered eight-year-old—on a phone that the paper's editor Rebekah Brooks gave her as a gift.
News Corporation CEO Rupert Murdoch arrived a few hours early at the Houses of Parliament to face questioning over his tabloid phone-hacking scandal, but his driver quickly drive off after being mobbed by photographers. In one of the pictures we're not so sure he's even alive. Have a quick look while you gear up for today's main event.
