Last fall I interned with the Washington Monthly. Save for my time as a college opinion columnist, some courses I took in high school and college, and my brief, half-assed period as a reporter for my high school paper (I vaguely remember writing a truly fantastic article about the results of a girls’ JV cross-country skiing match), I hadn’t had much exposure to the world of actual, practical journalism. My time at the Monthly was great. I learned a huge amount working with the magazine’s editors, Zach Roth, Rebecca Sinderbrand, and Rachel Morris. For anyone looking for a magazine journalism internship, I can’t recommend the Monthly highly enough.

So maybe I’m a bit biased in saying that everyone should read “Prisoner 345,” Rachel Morris’s cover story in the Columbia Journalism Review, but they should. In it, Rachel discusses the case of Sami al-Haj, an Al Jazeera cameraman who has been held in U.S. custody since shortly after 9/11. He was originally accused of recording videos for Osama bin Laden, but the accusations against him have frequently changed. The evidence against al-Haj is tenuous at best, and there’s reason to believe he’s being held as part of the U.S. government’s continuing grudge against – and suspicion of – Al Jazeera (according to al-Haj’s lawyer, the authorities at Gitmo offered to release him if he agreed to spy on the network).

Rachel’s piece is an intricately reported account of al-Haj’s plight, conditions inside Gitmo, and the shockingly unjust legal system the U.S. government has set up to deal with inmates there – most of whom, we now know, have and had little or nothing to do with the fight against Al Qaeda. Rachel hits the nail on the head when she writes, “The central question underlying the case of al-Haj and the other detainees is not their guilt or innocence, but why they have been held at Guantánamo for six years without a mechanism to fairly determine whether they belong there.”

Rachel also just launched a blog. She’s a really talented writer and journalist, so check it out.

While I’m on the subject, everyone should read the Washington Monthly (I know I just plugged their internship; now I’m plugging the magazine itself). There are very few “inside-the-beltway” magazines that consistently provide more than the tired regurgitations and haughty pronouncements that have come to dominate much of politically oriented print journalism, but the Monthly is one of them. It’s short on shallow opinions and long on in-depth reporting that's always fun to read, no matter how wonkish the topic. So go grab a copy and then become a lifelong subscriber. Tell them Jesse sent you. And if you need any more convincing, the Monthly is helmed by Paul Glastris, who worked in the Clinton White House alongside CP’s very down David Halperin.

Whoa. I just realized that this post is very sincere and genuine. I’m far more accustomed to dealing in cynicism and sarcasm. Maybe this will balance things out a bit.