Just as citizen reporting is mounting a challenge to professional journalism, wiki food sites are threatening the traditional mode of culinary writing. Instead of relying on professionals to create and vigorously test recipes, crowd-sourced Web publications invite the huddled masses to share their favorite Caesar salad or chicken fricassee. But which model is more likely…

by Dana Stevens Hanging over any remake, but especially over the remake of a classic, is the question “Why?” Sometimes that syllable is muttered with a shrug of resignation (“The Wicker Man with Nic Cage? Why?”). Sometimes it’s bellowed to the uncaring heavens in agony (“Last Tango in Paris with Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes?…

In late 2002, Source magazine publisher and sometime rapper Ray “Benzino” Scott declared war on Eminem-he produced a tape of the Detroit superstar rapping the n-word as a teenager, called him “the rap Hitler,” and mentioned that, by the way, there was a new Benzino record hitting stores soon. At root, Scott’s beef revolved around…

By Jeremy Stahl As the summer tourist season draws to a close in New York, so too winds down the high period for one of the more peculiar attractions the city has to offer: Sunday church services in Harlem, which bring in thousands of foreign travelers each week. While the practice has been the topic…

By Josh Levin A destitute black teenager moves in with a rich white family, takes up football, boosts his grades and becomes a star NFL offensive lineman. There’s a reason The Blind Side was a best-selling book and a monster box-office hit — the tale of Michael Oher and the Tuohy family sounds like it…

By Paul Devlin As of this week, rap finally has an anthology, published by Yale University Press. The Anthology of Rap sets out to capture the evolution of rap lyrics through what its editors consider representative examples, collecting the work of a wide variety of MCs who recorded from 1979 through 2009, from Grandmaster Caz to Joell…

Written by Paul Devlin Last Thursday, I wrote an article for Slate about The Anthology of Rap, officially published this week by the Yale University Press. In that piece, I pointed out the errors I’d found in reading the book’s transcriptions of rap lyrics. (I also noted how tricky and difficult such transcription can be.)…

Paul Devlin, Slate: What was your process for transcribing the lyrics of the songs included in The Anthology of Rap? Adam Bradley: We appreciate the opportunity to respond to your questions, Paul. In our Introduction to The Anthology of Rap, we discuss our editorial procedures and transcription principles. Our process was as follows: (1) Listen to…