A map showing car commuters in Massachusetts:

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One showing public transit commuters:

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One showing folks who walk to work (lucky!):

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And those who work at home:

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Earlier today, the City & Regional Magazine Awards finalists were announced. Big congratulations to all the writers, editors, and designers—a lot of very fine work was done this year. Great to see some smaller publications mixing it up with the big guys (I’m looking at you, Texas Monthly.)

CRMA, unfortunately, doesn’t post links to the actual stories, so I’ve hunted down the finalists in the narrative journalism categories: reporting, personality profile, feature story, and civic journalism. Wherever possible, I’ve linked to the single-page/print view, to make your Instapaper-ing/Pocket-ing that much easier. Enjoy.

Reporting

“The $53 Million Bamboozle,” by Bryan Smith, Chicago Magazine

“The Collapse,” by Evan West, Indianapolis Monthly

“The Identity Thief,” by Louise Farr, Los Angeles Monthly

“In Plain Sight,” by Steven Mikulan, Los Angeles Monthly

“The Innocent Man,” by Pamela Colloff, Texas Monthly (Part two here. Both parts of this story are amazing—it’s some of the finest writing/reporting I’ve read, period.)

Personality Profile

“Jeanne Assam is Still Waiting,” by Robert Sanchez, 5280 (Congrats, Robert!)

“Schoolly D is Living the American Dream,” by Jason Fagone, Philadelphia Magazine (And you too, Jason!)

“Deconstructing Bob Cassilly,” by Jeannette Cooperman, St. Louis Magazine

“Portrait of the Artist as as Postman,” by Jason Sheeler, Texas Monthly

“The Passion of John Wojnowski,” by Ariel Sabar, Washingtonian

Feature Story

“Spellbinder,” by Thomas Mullen, Atlanta Magazine

“The Audition,” by Jennie Dorris, Boston Magazine (Disclosure: My wife is the writer of this piece, but I had absolutely no involvement in this story. Yes, I married up.)

“Man or Beast?” by Jonah Ogles, Cincinnatti Magazine

“Mean Kids,” by James Ross Gardner, Seattle Met

“The Things They Leave Behind,” by Rachel Manteuffel, Washingtonian

Civic Journalism

“Lawbreakers, Lawmakers,” by David Bernstein and Noah Isackson, Chicago Magazine

“Why Did No One Save Jack?” by Steve Volk, Philadelphia Magazine (Congratulations to Phillymag for slaying the prestigious Civic Journalism category.)

“The Revolution Will Be Televised,” by Steve Volk, Philadelphia Magazine

“The Reckoning,” by Patrick Kerkstra, Philadelphia Magazine

“Hannah and Andrew” and “Hannah’s Prayer,” by Pamela Colloff, Texas Monthly

(Photo above is of the Boston Harbor. Five points awarded if you can name the bar where it was taken.)

The clergy sex abuse scandal exploded onto front pages across the country in 2002. A painful decade later, the Archdiocese of Boston has begun to rebuild. But a stubborn question remains: What kind of man wants to become a priest?

Read the story online at Boston Magazine or in PDF. Featured on Byliner, Longform.org, and The Browser.

(Photos by Matt Kalinowski)

Parking in Boston seems pricey. It’s not, and we need to make it more expensive.

A column on the need of a supply-and-demand parking system for Boston.

Read the story at Boston Magazine.

Illustration by Peter Crowther/Debut

Read it online at 5280.

The Tamale Maker of Tejon Street won first place in the “Politics: General Reporting” category of the 2012 Society of Professional Journalists’ Top of the Rockies awards.

Check it out online at 5280 or read a PDF here.

“The Last Resort” won first place in the business feature writing category for the 2012 Society of Professional Journalists’ Top of the Rockies awards.

So, it’s no surprise that we lack the passport distribution, of, say, the United Kingdom, where 80 percent of citizens have their passports (and it’s quite easy to get an affordable flight to a foreign country). Still, American passport applications have been rising steadily over the past 30 years. They peaked in 2007, which was a unique year: It was a year before the State Department started requiring passports for Americans heading to (and returning from) Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean, and Bermuda, so there was a mad rush of applications. It also happened to be the year before the start of the Great Recession—the last year, in other words, that Americans were dropping cash on everything. Including expensive foreign travel.

(If you click on the chart, it’ll bring you to a larger version. The light blue denotes “passport cards,” which the State Department started issuing in 2008, for land and sea travel between the U.S. and Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean, and Bermuda.)

Passport applications have dropped off a bit since the 2007 peak, but remain fairly high, at nearly 14 million in 2010. But how many Americans actually posses a current and valid passport? That gets tricky. Adult passports are valid for 10 years, which means that an adult passport issued before 2001 is no longer valid. Based on the State Department numbers, about 114 million passports have been issued in the past 10 years.

That doesn’t take into account all the kids, whose passports are only good for five years. According to the Census Bureau, 21.8% of the U.S. population is under 16—so any children’s passports issued before 2006 are invalid. If you take those children’s expired passports out of the equation, there are only 105 million valid American passports. (I based my calculations upon the supposition that adults and kids receive passports at an equivalent rate, based on their respective population percentages. Adults are probably issued a higher rate of passports, but there is no better way of breaking it down. If you have better numbers, please share.)

That means that 34.4 percent of the population owns a passport—which is still higher than I thought. And higher than it was even three years ago, when only about 28 percent owned one. We’re not the U.K., but now that more than a third of Americans can travel abroad, we’re reaching a critical mass.

And, because America loves a good ole’ competition, we come to our final question: What are the best traveled states? This got a little complicated, as the State Department only broke down state numbers back to 2007. Extrapolating backward, based on the growth of passport applications in the above chart, we end up with a pretty map like this (click for a larger version):

New Jersey is the best-traveled state, with 47.4 percent owning passports. (Are that many people desperate to get out of the Jerz?) Mississippi is the least adventurous: Only 13.4 percent of state residents own a passport.

If you look at the map, a few things are clear: the coastal and border states tend to be the best traveled, especially in the Northeast. Far-flung Alaska also has a high rate of passport ownership, which makes sense, given it’s proximity to Canada. (And Russia!) Unsurprisingly, all of these well-traveled states are among the wealthiest in the country. The least worldy states, meanwhile, are in the South; they also happen to be among the poorest states. As their wealth rises, passport applications will likely rise. Until then, it’s a reminder: flying, especially to a foreign country, ain’t cheap.

An essay on why biking to work is far more rewarding than driving.

5280.com or a PDF.

(An essay from “Rise and Dine,” a March 2011 feature on Denver’s best breakfasts.)

Read it online at 5280 or check out a PDF.