Correspondence with the Unabomber

"In the times of digital vertigo, we can’t happily disregard his bleak visions solely as bad dreams of a mad man."

This is a first for Just the Facts, an article written by another journalist.

Finnish journalist and author, Pekka Vahvanen, writes for Helsingin Sanomat, the largest newspaper in the Nordic Countries, as well as Suomen Kuvalehti, Finland’s largest circulation news magazine. We met online last November when he interviewed me for an article about the 60th anniversary of the JFK assassination.

At one point, we got sidetracked to talk about journalism and writing. Any journalist who has been around for a while has a short list of stories for which they were commissioned but that never saw the light of day. The editor who loved it when it was assigned left for some other publication. Occasionally someone else beats you to the story. And most often, it just falls off the radar at the magazine or newspaper that assigned it.

Pekka mentioned that Wired had commissioned him to write an article about correspondence he had over several years with Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber. Wired never ran th…