Long Lead

An award-winning journalism studio focused on finding, funding, producing, and publishing independent, in-depth reporting.

Long Lead is a new media publisher focused on finding, funding, and producing original, in-depth journalism. In addition to funding the reporting, it connects veteran independent writers, photographers, filmmakers, and designers to produce best-in-class journalism and editorial products. With an eye for ambitious, ground-breaking stories, Long Lead publishes works about any subject, in any medium, anywhere in the world.

09/24/2026

When considering how ORI MAGAZINE meets a need for travel-focused journalism, founder Kade Krichko points to how longform travel features can inspire people to get out and see the world — and can even change their life.

For DEPTH PERCEPTION, Kelly Kimball discusses with Krichko how the combination of local wisdom and an outsider’s fresh eyes can make stories sing, how Jon Krakauer’s writing changed his life, and how even a globally minded publication can still make a tangible impact on their own block.

Read now: https://depthperception.longlead.com/p/ori-magazine-kade-krichko-travel-journalism

09/23/2026

Journalist Gillian Brockell is a self professed "aviation geek" — and her role as a former flight attendant helped her with the connections to cover one of the biggest stories of the year: ICE deportation flights.

Brockell shares, "I have a base-knowledge of how flight planning and scheduling work, and what federal aviation regulations are being violated on all of these flights."

Despite owning the ICE deportation flights beat and being asked by mainstream reporters behind the scenes about flights, Brockell was struggling to make ends meet freelancing on the subject.

Her newsletter and a recent grant with The American Prospect have helped her so she can continue to do the important work of writing about ICE flights and third-country removals.

Thor Benson spoke to Brockell for DEPTH PERCEPTION about her reporting process, how her background in aviation helped her, and how being collaborative with her expertise opened up new opportunities for her within journalism.

Read the full interview: https://depthperception.longlead.com/p/tracking-ice-flights-gillian-brockell-journalist

09/22/2026

An ICE agent shot a DoorDash driver on Sunday in Austin, Texas.

It’s the latest misuse of power by federal law enforcement across President Trump’s second term which Garrett Graff (Garrett Graff) says has marked “the arrival of a dystopian America, one that would have been unrecognizable to the Americans in the summer of 2001.”

“It is all the result of an order, a mantra, and a promise made while the fires of the Twin Towers and the Pentagon still burned: Never again,” says Graff in the latest episode of LONG SHADOW. “Reacting in the middle of one nightmare, we created another.”

How did we get here? Listen to LONG SHADOW: 9/11’S LINGERING QUESTIONS to find out:

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/long-shadow/id1577471264?i=1000787156922

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/6TLceFpy7mBF42xUGMGQ2i?si=bee44673d1be4ca9

YouTube: https://youtu.be/n8dt4bYTpak

09/16/2026

Sometimes a writer's best profile comes from examining their own personal experiences.

Famed for his Esquire profile of Roger Ebert, an exploration of a lawsuit dealing with a stolen magic trick from Penn and Teller, and more, writer Chris Jones' memoir chronicles the emotional turbulence of the end of his marriage and the path of rebuilding his life to where it is today.

In "Legs Hearts Minds: Loss and Its Remedies," Jones writes, "In the span of 20 minutes, I lost my wife and my best friend,” of finding texts between his wife and their mutual friend that would come to end their marriage.

As someone who has made a career out of reporting, the natural inclination was for Jones to begin reporting on his experience, sharing, “I just began documenting things. It wasn’t out of a journalistic thing. But as I think about traumatic events in my life, I do tend to go outside myself.”

Over the last 10 years, Jones has "very slowly, incrementally" rebuilt his life.

For this week's DEPTH PERCEPTION, Brin-Jonathan Butler speaks with Jones about his process for writing through the worst struggle of his life, how he elevated the story to one of comfort and inspiration for anyone who has experienced significant loss, and how, a decade later, he’s happier than he’s ever been.

Read now:
https://depthperception.longlead.com/p/chris-jones-legs-hearts-minds-book-esquire-interview

09/14/2026

You can’t understand the Department of Homeland Security, the war in Iraq, or our border approach now unless you can understand the fear, the chaos, the confusion, and the trauma that were a byproduct of the September 11 terrorism attacks, shares historian Garrett Graff (Garrett Graff).

Graff has reported on the legacy of 9/11 for decades and just teamed up with Long Lead to release a special episode of LONG SHADOW: 9/11’S LINGERING QUESTIONS, coming out five years after the first season topped Apple Podcast’s history charts.

For DEPTH PERCEPTION, Graff speaks with Parker Molloy about the U.S. security apparatus created from 9/11, why neither former Presidents Obama nor Biden did anything to reel it in, what the history book version of September 11 misses, and why the oral history of 2026 can’t be written just yet.

Read the interview at Substack and get the new episode of LONG SHADOW’s first season wherever you listen to your podcasts.

09/11/2026

Marking the dividing line between the 20th and 21st centuries, the September 11 attacks quickly became the hinge upon which so much changed. Many watched the tragedy unfold live on television, but most still don’t understand what happened that day. Twenty-five years later, almost a third of Americans are too young to even remember the tragic event.

While thorough, large-scale efforts like the 9/11 Commission tried to make sense of that chaotic day, many questions remain.
The Signal Award-winning first season of Long Shadow attempts to answer those questions and explore other enduring mysteries surrounding September 11.

First released in 2021 to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the attacks, the eight-episode limited series quickly became Apple’s number one history podcast. In 2026, marking 25 years since the tragedy, a special ninth episode was released to explore the legacy of 9/11 and its impact on the present day.

Episode 1: Why weren’t more people rescued from the Twin Towers?
After the World Trade Center was hit on September 11, 2001, first responders coordinated the largest emergency response in NYC’s history. But their heroism was hampered by institutional bureaucracy and ultimately undone by decisions made when the Twin Towers were built.

Episode 2: What was the target of United Airlines Flight 93?
Every defense mechanism the U.S. government had on 9/11 failed. But the passengers of United Airlines Flight 93 helped prevent another attack, working together to stop the hijackers from causing more destruction.

Episode 3: Who issued the order to shoot down Flight 93?
With the Capitol under attack and the others in the chain of command off the grid, VP Dick Cheney gave fighter pilots flying above the Capitol permission to shoot down hijacked commercial planes. But did he actually have the authority to issue this order?

Episode 4: Was there a ‘fifth plane’ on 9/11?
After the first two hijackings, the nation’s air traffic controllers grounded thousands of planes flying to and over the U.S. Their quick thinking is said to have potentially saved countless lives. But what if another plane was meant to be hijacked that day, and never made it off the ground?

09/10/2026

Many of us watched the terrorist attacks on September 11th, 2001 unfold right before our eyes. Marking the dividing line between the 20th and 21st centuries, the September 11 attacks quickly became the hinge upon which so much changed. Most people still don’t understand what happened that day. Twenty-five years later, almost a third of Americans are too young to even remember the tragic event.

In the years since, law enforcement, congressional inquiries and the press have successfully uncovered more about what happened that day. But on the 20th anniversary of the attacks, many mysteries remain. Hosted by bestselling author, historian, and reporter Garrett Graff (Garrett Graff), LONG SHADOW answers those lingering questions and explores other enduring mysteries that still surround 9/11, the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil.

While thorough, large-scale efforts like the 9/11 Commission tried to make sense of that chaotic day, many questions remain. The Signal Award-winning first season of LONG SHADOW attempts to answer those questions and explore other enduring mysteries surrounding September 11.

First released in 2021 to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the attacks, the eight-episode limited series quickly became Apple’s number one history podcast. In 2026, marking 25 years since the tragedy, a special ninth episode was released to explore the legacy of 9/11 and its impact on the present day.

Listen to LONG SHADOW: 9/11’S LINGERING QUESTIONS wherever you get your podcasts.

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/long-shadow/id1577471264?i=1000532345727
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/02MlSKZLCNb8C75jFzCK3g?si=be074a91a7574308

09/09/2026

On September 11, 2001, Rozina Ali was made aware of her Muslim identity.

In that Muslim identity awareness was born a call to more deeply understand the human impact of the War on Terror, Islamophobia, and the Muslim community.

In her new book, 'Seasons of Fury,' Ali traces America’s post-9/11 reckoning through the intimate stories of four Muslim families across eight decades, making the case that Islamophobia was rooted long before 9/11.

Each family member in the book is grappling with the question "What is my place in this country?” while being an active member in their story, "contending with the forces at play that were shaping their lives."

Ali shares, “As I was doing the reporting for this book, I really appreciated just how much this story is not a Muslim story. It is an American story. It is about this country because it is about the way that U.S. foreign policy is shaped. It is about our willingness to allow an administration to use the powers of surveillance, entrapment, and material support laws against certain groups that it disagrees with.”

For this week's DEPTH PERCEPTION, Kelly Kimball speaks with Ali about her sweeping narrative history of the U.S. government’s broken compact with its Muslim citizens, and what that history reveals about America itself.

Read now:
https://depthperception.longlead.com/p/rozina-ali-book-9-11-september-muslim-america

09/02/2026

25 years after the September 11 terror attacks, national security journalist Garrett Graff shares that the U.S. should break up the Department of Homeland Security — a bureau that was once consolidated to protect the country following the 9/11 attacks, but has "been turned against ordinary Americans" in our streets.

Graff has reported on the legacy of 9/11 for decades and just teamed up with Long Lead to release a special episode of LONG SHADOW: 9/11'S LINGERING QUESTIONS, coming out five years after the first season topped Apple Podcast's history charts. The new episode "Never Forget" brings the story to this present moment, tracing the roots of "the situation that we find ourselves in with Donald Trump, ICE, immigration, mass deportations, the Republicans’ 'One Big Beautiful Bill' — everything about that, really, is rooted in the decisions of 9/11 and the way that America reacted thereafter."

For this week's DEPTH PERCEPTION, Parker Molloy speaks with Graff about the U.S. security apparatus created from 9/11, why neither former Presidents Obama nor Biden did anything to reel it in, what the history book version of September 11 misses, and why the oral history of 2026 can’t be written just yet.

Read now: https://depthperception.longlead.com/p/9-11-best-history-podcast-long-shadow-garrett-graff

Listen to the new, special episode of LONG SHADOW: 9/11'S LINGERING QUESTIONS, "Never Forget" wherever you get your podcasts. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/long-shadow/id1577471264?i=1000787156922

09/01/2026

What is the legacy of 9/11?

Twenty-five years after the deadliest terrorist attack on U.S. soil, we’re still living with the choices America made in its aftermath.

Pulitzer-Prize finalist, historian, and journalist Garrett Graff (Garrett Graff), host of LONG SHADOW: 9/11’S LINGERING QUESTIONS, traces how a nation determined to prevent another attack reshaped itself forever. In the wake of September 11, 2001, Americans faced difficult questions: How much liberty would we sacrifice for security? And how much power would we give the government? The creation of the Department of Homeland Security marked the beginning of a new era and its mission was clear: Keep America safe.

A quarter century later, the federal security apparatus built after 9/11 has evolved into something few Americans in the summer of 2001 could have imagined. In 2026, DHS agents conduct warrantless raids, ICE and Border Patrol detain people for months — sometimes indefinitely — without due process, and protesters have been killed after being labeled terrorists by their own government.

Five years after topping Apple Podcast’s history charts, LONG SHADOW: 9/11’S LINGERING QUESTIONS returns with a special episode — out today — that explores how fear after 9/11 fueled the growth of a massive federal policing apparatus, one that has since been engulfed by corruption and abuse in what Graff argues is one of the most consequential law enforcement scandals in American history.

Listen today wherever you get your podcasts.

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/long-shadow/id1577471264?i=1000787156922

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/6TLceFpy7mBF42xUGMGQ2i?si=bee44673d1be4ca9

YouTube: https://youtu.be/n8dt4bYTpak

Address

Worldwide
Los Angeles, CA

Website

http://longlead.com/

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Long Lead posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Want your business to be the top-listed Media Company in Los Angeles?