Ken Armstrong

@bykenarmstrong

Reporter/editor/narrative coach @Bloomberg.com. Co-author, Unbelievable. Law school dropout/honorary doctor. Formers: ProPublica, Marshall Project, Seattle Times. Perturbable.

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Ken Armstrong@bykenarmstrong· Apr 28

No. 2 story on Seattle Times homepage right now. In Seattle, we take Costco very, very seriously.

Have you noticed this change to Costco's $1.50 hot dog combo?

Ken Armstrong@bykenarmstrong· Dec 20

After the flood warnings comes...this

King County warns of toilet rats after record flooding

Ken Armstrong@bykenarmstrong· Aug 27

Top three stories on @propublica.org right now

The Leader of Trump’s Assault on Higher Education Has a Troubled Legal and Financial History

Trump’s Pick to Help Run the FBI Has a History of Prosecuting Influential Democrats

She Pushed to Overturn Trump’s Loss in the 2020 Election. Now She’ll Help Oversee U.S. Election Security.

Ken Armstrong@bykenarmstrong· Aug 24

I love reading how writers edit themselves, so to read how E.B. White revised and revised to write this, "a single perfect paragraph," is delightful. (Also? I had no idea that anyone had ever been labeled a "paragrapher.") @nathanheller.bsky.social @newyorker.com link.newyorker.com/view/5be9f03...

by E. B. White

The moon, it turns out, is a great place for men. One-sixth gravity must be a lot of fun, and when Armstrong and Aldrin went into their bouncy little dance, like two happy children, it was a moment not only of triumph but of gaiety. The moon, on the other hand, is a poor place for flags. Ours looked stiff and awkward, trying to float on the breeze that does not blow. (There must be a lesson here somewhere.) It is traditional, of course, for explorers to plant the flag, but it struck us, as we watched with awe and admiration and pride, that our two fellows were universal men, not national men, and should have been equipped accordingly. Like every great river and every great sea, the moon belongs to none and belongs to all. It still holds the key to madness, still controls the tides that lap on shores everywhere, still guards the lovers who kiss in every land under no banner but the sky. What a pity that in our moment of triumph we did not forswear the familiar Iwo Jima scene and plant instead a device acceptable to all: a limp white handkerchief, perhaps, symbol of the common cold, which, like the moon, affects us all, unites us all.

Ken Armstrong@bykenarmstrong· Jun 16

Thank you, @lastweektonight.com, for highlighting this @wpln.bsky.social @propublica.org story on tonight's show on juvenile justice. And yes, these children were jailed on a charge that is not an actual charge. That was just one of the ways in which the system broke down. For link to the story ⬇️

Screen grab from this week's "Last Week Tonight," showing John Oliver alongside a story by WPLN and ProPublica headlined: "Black Children Were Jailed for a Crime That Doesn't Exist. Almost Nothing Happened to the Adults in Charge." Beneath this is written, "It's not an actual charge."

Ken Armstrong@bykenarmstrong· May 30

Also? "...there are people very far from Washington, D.C., who are making decisions that have a dramatic impact on how the White House's immigration policy is carried out on the ground. And I think a lot of these more local decisions get ignored because they seem routine or boring or small..."

EXCERPT OF THE STORY: Maybe things could have been different. While John’s plane sat on the tarmac at the Miami airport, Linda Jaramillo sat in a jailhouse turned government building in Estancia, the county seat, discussing the private detention center that would soon detain him. Torrance County’s more than $2 million-a-month contract with ICE was set to expire unless Jaramillo and her two fellow county commissioners voted to extend it.
QUESTION FROM NIEMAN STORYBOARD'S MARK ARMSTRONG: I appreciate the way you use time to show how different pieces of the system are operating concurrently. How do you report and write in a way that allows you to do this?
ANSWER FROM RACHEL ADAMS-HEARD: On a high level, I think this is a type of story where timing is really key. We wanted to show how there are people very far from Washington, D.C., who are making decisions that have a dramatic impact on how the White House's immigration policy is carried out on the ground. And I think a lot of these more local decisions get ignored because they seem routine or boring or small compared to what happens on a federal level. And yet these are the decisions that are in part responsible for the hundreds of men being flown across the country to rural detention centers.

Ken Armstrong@bykenarmstrong· May 25

Susan Brownmiller's work was foundational. In "Unbelievable," my book with T. Christian Miller, we wrote at length about the criminal justice system's history of treating women's reports of rape with knee-jerk skepticism. And we started with an indelible line from Brownmiller.

Marie’s case concerned one police department, which bungled one investigation, which led one court to hold her a liar. But her experience was no aberration. When it comes to reports of rape, the criminal justice system has long embraced the “cherished male assumption that female persons tend to lie,” as Susan Brownmiller once wrote. In courtrooms throughout America, the historical default setting has been doubt.

Ken Armstrong@bykenarmstrong· Mar 16

Two of the @nytimes.com top three headlines right now: www.nytimes.com/2025/03/16/u... www.nytimes.com/2025/03/16/u...

Trump Sends Hundreds of Venezuelans to El Salvador in Face of Judge's Order

Doctor and Professor Is Deported Despite a Judge's Order

Ken Armstrong@bykenarmstrong· Mar 13

When the first two lines are as great as this... "I'm not going to lie," Sam Bankman-Fried told me. This was a lie. ... it's no surprise the next 242 pages fly by. To understand crypto—or to understand why there is no understanding crypto—you gotta read "Number Go Up," by @zekefaux.bsky.social.

Ken Armstrong@bykenarmstrong· Feb 17

"After President Donald Trump canceled a report on the state of nature in the US, the scientists ... say they’ll continue their work and build on it." "Many publishers have since stepped forward..." "Copy editors, artists and others have volunteered to help." www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news...

A photo of five scientists, published with this cutline:

From left, Tessa Francis, Howard Frumkin, Josh Lawler, Anne Guerry, and Phil Levin, part of a group of scientists that worked on the country’s first National Nature Assessment, pose together for a portrait in Seattle on Friday. Scientists across the country are going forward with the publication after it was cancelled by the Trump administration. (Ivy Ceballo / The Seattle Times)

Ken Armstrong@bykenarmstrong· Feb 17

For what it's worth, these are the eight non-existent cases the lawyers' AI platform "hallucinated":

Wyoming v. U.S. Department of Energy, 2006 WL 3801910 (D. Wyo. 2006)

Holland v. Keller, 2018 WL 2446162 (D. Wyo. 2018)

United States v. Hargrove, 2019 WL 2516279 (D. Wyo. 2019)

Meyer v. City of Cheyenne, 2017 WL 3461055 (D. Wyo. 2017)

Benson v. State of Wyoming, 2010 WL 4683851 (D. Wyo. 2010)

Smith v. United States, 2011 WL 2160468 (D. Wyo. 2011)

Woods v. BNSF Railway Co., 2016 WL 165971 (D. Wyo. 2016)

Fitzgerald v. City of New York, 2018 WL 3037217 (S.D.N.Y. 2018)

Ken Armstrong@bykenarmstrong· Feb 15

Recently finished this book by @ahylton26.bsky.social and can't recommend it enough. Brave, brilliant, illuminating, enraging. An extraordinary work that says so much about where we've been and where we are.

Photo of the book "Madness" by Antonia Hylton. The book's cover has a blurb from Clint Smith at the top ("A book that left me breathless") and its subtitle is, "Race and Insanity in a Jim Crow Asylum." Across the bottom of the book is written, "Crownsville State Hospital."

Ken Armstrong@bykenarmstrong· Jan 18

Thank you, @csobelwrites.bsky.social @wsj.com, for including "Scoreboard, Baby" in your five best books on college football. Quite confident this will be the only time that anything I've written will appear on the same list as a novel by Don DeLillo.

Scoreboard, Baby: A Story of College Football, Crime, and Complicity

By Ken Armstrong and Nick Perry (2010)

4. “A chain saw registers 100 decibels. A Husky crowd hits 135.” The violent connotations in Ken Armstrong and Nick Perry’s description of Husky Stadium’s obliterating noise are anything but incidental in this tour de force portrait of the University of Washington’s deeply gifted, profoundly troubled 2000 squad—a team that would win the Rose Bowl and featured at least two dozen players who were either arrested or charged with a crime while they were enrolled in school. The reporting in this book is dumbfoundingly good (down to little details such as how, when Husky Stadium was being built, astronomers were consulted to determine the stadium’s ideal axis for minimizing glare). College football’s ever-fraught racial dynamics are captured with disturbing accuracy (a black player says “football was the type of therapy poor people could afford”). And through a polyphony of voices that range from UW’s millionaire head coach to a little girl in Alaska who watches her estranged father play on TV, we get not only the story of a team and the institutional rot it embodied but a masterly illustration of how the problems plaguing college football are the same ones that perennially ail this country.

Ken Armstrong@bykenarmstrong· Dec 31

And in this @bloomberg.com story by Olivia Carville on teenagers caught up in sextortion scams, Carville provides a text exchange between a 17-year-old who’s unraveling and a scammer applying unrelenting pressure. www.bloomberg.com/features/202...

By 3 a.m., Jordan was starting to unravel.

Jordan: Why are you doing this to me?
I am begging for my own life.

Dani: 10 … 9 … 8 …
I bet your GF will leave you for some other dude.

Jordan: I will be dead.
Like I want to KMS [kill myself]

Dani: Sure. I will watch you die a miserable death.

Jordan: It’s over. You win bro ….
I am kms rn. Bc of you.

Dani: Good. Do that fast.
Or I’ll make you do it.
I swear to God.

Ken Armstrong@bykenarmstrong· Dec 31

At year’s end, when thinking of stories that hit me hard, it’s often dialogue I remember most. Two examples from 2024: In this @propublica.org story, @davidmcswane.bsky.social builds and builds until he confronts a doctor with a question that's chillingly direct. www.propublica.org/article/thom...

I had shown him the “phenobarbital cases” memo, and we’d discussed the code status changes, Scot Warwick, the narcotics and now Nadine. Finally, I had to ask, “Are you killing your patients?”

“Well, uh, no. I’m not,” he responded.

“Why did you hesitate?” I asked.

“Well,” he said. “It depends on what you mean by killing them.”

Ken Armstrong@bykenarmstrong· Nov 22

You should always read @jasonleopold.bsky.social, but this week in particular you must read Jason Leopold, because, I mean, just look at this lead. Jason's work is a testament to the power of public records—and to the persistence needed to get them. He's a force of nature. @bloomberg.com

Prominent critics of the Kremlin, and Putin in particular, seem to have a terrible habit of dropping dead under very suspicious circumstances. Some fall out of windows, bludgeon themselves to death, are poisoned or are said to have committed suicide in ways that defy logic. Anonymous US intelligence officials have long said they suspected that some of the mysterious deaths over the years were part of a campaign by Putin to assassinate his enemies. But internal US government documents that contained such explicit assertions have never really surfaced. Until now.

Ken Armstrong@bykenarmstrong· Nov 17

If you don't already, I'd recommend subscribing to Local Matters, a free weekly roundup of investigative reporting from @ire-nicar.bsky.social. Below is but one item in this week's newsletter. The others are just as maddening. Subscribe here: linktr.ee/lmattersnews