Occupy Wall Street was the most covered news story
of 2011. Among those who followed the movement like a
storm chaser, Boston Phoenix Staff Writer Chris Faraone
is one of the few who blogged about daily Occupy
minutiae, but also stepped back to smoke lots of weed,
investigate and analyze the protest, and deliver weekly
features. Starting in September, Faraone published a
series of deep Occupy portraits, traveling to more than
a dozen cities from Boston to Seattle. His work
illustrates day-to-day Occupy operations, as well the
characters who make the movement tick. In the process,
he also landed nationwide exclusives, like a scoop on a
federation of police officers who support Occupy. Though
Faraone is to the left of liberal, he wrote with a
balanced reporter's eye, in many cases aggravating
readers on both sides of the ideological aisle. Ignoring
partisan preferences, Faraone dug for the root of topics
ranging from an accused thief who moved between camps,
to a veteran anarchist who was inspired by Occupy to
come out from underground. As was noted in a recent
Columbia Journalism Review profile of Faraone, his
approach to covering Occupy was wholly unique, as he
became "a one-man swarm: embedding full-time at Boston's
Dewey Square encampment; visiting other movements around
the country; juggling feature stories, blog posts, radio
spots, and Twitter fights." 99 Nights with the 99
Percent is a collection of Faraone's published posts and
articles on Occupy, streamlined into a sleek edition
that also packs unpublished pieces and a number of bonus
features. In addition to pics and illustrations, a
series of haiku poems - or "Occupaikus" - run throughout
the book, taking readers through a timeline of the first
100 days of the national movement. There are other books
on Occupy, but 99 Nights is in a category of its
own.
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