The panel was hosted by New York editor-in-chief Adam Moss and three of the magazine’s contributing editors, Wesley Yang, Jessica Pressler and Dan P. Lee. All three of their pieces had been put up for National Magazine Awards, Mr. Moss said, and all three were edited by David Haskell, New York features editor and part-time moonshiner, who was seated in front row.

“It’s somehow thrilling and somewhat unbelievable that there is now a thriving community of lovers of long-form periodical nonfiction,” Mr. Moss told a packed audience of readers and—judging by the technical specificity of the question-and-answer session—fellow writers at Housing Works Bookstore.

“Longreads is an especially gratifying corrective to the comments I read at NYMag.com complaining that anything over 400 words is too long and therefore necessarily boring,” Mr. Moss said.

But behind the longreads, it turns out, is a pile of short reads.

Mr. Yang, author of “Asian Like Me,” the magazine’s most-viewed piece ever, was cajoled into writing the piece by editors after Amy Chua’s controversial “Tiger Mother” archetype blew into the national media via her Wall Street Journal opinion piece, “Why Chinese Mothers are Superior.” “David, seeing the opportunity in this, said, well, we know a person of Asian descent who writes for us, so let’s get him to do something,” Mr. Yang said dryly.

Mr. Yang said he was defensive at first but, once he began poking around, settled on a different, though related topic. What happens to all the academic strivers after they leave their Tiger Mothers’ dens?

The final piece became the starting piece for yet another, longer read: Mr. Yang’s first, forthcoming book, which was bought by HarperCollins imprint Ecco Press in July.

“One of the things that’s amazing about the piece is its language,” Mr. Moss said, as he gave the audience a taste of its opening salvo.

“Let me summarize my feelings toward Asian values: Fuck filial piety. Fuck grade-grubbing. Fuck Ivy League mania. Fuck deference to authority. Fuck humility and hard work. Fuck harmonious relations. Fuck sacrificing for the future. Fuck earnest, striving, middle-class servility.”

Good luck getting language like that past editors at the Wall Street Journal!

Ms. Pressler’s Nieman Journalism Lab-lauded profile of Diane Passage, the ex-stripper wife of celebrity accountant and Ponzi schemer Kenneth Starr, came straight out of the tabloids.

“It was a great story in the New York Post and went on for weeks and weeks in that wonderful Post way,” Ms. Pressler said. “It kind of went away and then there was another blurb, six months later, that the wife, Diane Passage, was going to be in a reality show about Scores, the nightclub where she worked.”

New York news editor James Burnett thought the reality show was a good peg for a “Minutes With” interview with Ms. Passage.

“Why don’t you go out with Diane Passage and maybe you can go to Scores and she can teach you how to pole dance?” Ms. Pressler remembered Mr. Burnett telling her.

“And then I called human resources …” she joked. “No, and then I went.”

After spending time with Ms. Passage (still a friend, Ms. Pressler said, and by far the most glamorous person in the audience Wednesday night), Ms. Pressler decided that her and Mr. Starr’s hustler love story was too big for a front of book column.

The story of Travis, the chimpanzee raised as a human who turned on his “mother” and mauled her friend in 2009, was “scorched earth” by the time Mr. Lee got around to pitching “Travis the Menace” (named Best Longread of 2011).

As a former newspaper reporter, Mr. Lee said that if he’s interested in a story, he tends to ignore it out of jealousy that he’s not covering it. But after accidentally catching the mauled woman, Charla Nash, reveal her face, post-transplant surgery, on The Oprah Winfrey Show, he decided to shop a pitch around.

“I became extremely upset that this story was coming back and I had still never had my hands in it and I felt there was still something else there,” Mr. Lee said.

In fact, less-than-generous treatment by the tabloids and the Today show, which cast the chimpanzee’s owners as “freaks,” opened up sources who wanted a more dignified legacy for the family.

“Once the pack of wolves leaves … ,” Mr. Lee said.

Simon, a recent Bennington graduate who makes video art, and who has black hair and a thick mustache, said he did. He had also mashed, strained and stripped a foul-smelling brew that would eventually be distilled into un-aged corn whiskey (or moonshine) or aged into bourbon.

This was late in the afternoon on a Saturday at the Kings County Distillery, which Mr. Haskell and his business partner, Colin Spoelman, registered in April under a farm distillery license, introduced into law by former governor Eliot Spitzer. The 325-square-foot space, situated on the second floor of a nondescript building not far from the English Kills creek, was heavy with the smell of yeast and simmering corn.

"One person has complained about the smell," said Mr. Spoelman, sitting on an oak barrel where bourbon has been aging since May. Mr. Spoelman, who grew up in Kentucky, works for the architecture firm Bernard Tschumi. "But it's an industrial building. People make products here. I think it smells nice. I come here after work, and I'm like, 'Ah. It's working.'"

There were, in the beginning, some problems.

"The floor leaks, so whenever someone spills a drop of water, it goes down to the landlord," said Mr. Spoelman.

"There are a lot of imported ties and dress shirts from China stored downstairs," said Mr. Haskell.

Mr. Haskell, who looks younger than 31, has curly brown hair and dark brown eyes. He is the more serious of the pair. Mr. Spoelman, also 31, is tall and cheerful with messy blond hair and a beard. Kings County Distillery, which the former Yale roommates funded with small investments from friends and family, is New York City's first since Prohibition, the kind of quirky accomplishment that put the partners in the hyper-artisanal Brooklyn landscape of small-batch, hand-labeled (theirs, with a typewriter found on a Williamsburg street), local-ingredient-using purveyors occupied by Mast Brothers chocolate, Brooklyn Brine pickles and Marlow & Daughters butchers. Naturally, their moonshine is served at the sister (brother?) establishment Marlow & Sons, as well as other hip local restaurants like Roberta's and Fette Sau. Meanwhile, Astor Wines and Spirits sells 128 of their 200-milliliter moonshine bottles a month, at $20 each. In November, the spirit will be served at the Modern, Danny Meyer's midtown restaurant.

"David is one of the old Marlow & Sons' core clientele. He's always supported us and I wanted to support him," said Jason Schwartz, a manager at Marlow, where the moonshine is mixed with vermouth and served in a $12 cocktail called the White Manhattan. "A lot of those white, un-aged whiskeys have a high tone to them that's difficult to the palate. Theirs is the most naturally sweet and delicate. I would have probably purchased it regardless."

They currently make two and a half gallons of the moonshine and bourbon a day. The bourbon, they hope, will be ready by December. "It's pretty clear to us that the bourbon will be a more popular product, but we need to make enough money with the moonshine to support the distillery in the meantime," said Mr. Haskell.

Since Mr. Haskell and Mr. Spoelman have day jobs, five helpers like Simon work day and night shifts, seven days a week.

"A lot of them are journalism students," said Mr. Spoelman.

"Some are in school," said Mr. Haskell, "Others were bartending and were sick of customer service. Some are drawn to the chemistry."

Speaking of those day jobs: Unlike magazines or even architecture, whiskey sales are always reliable. Could the distillery ever replace their primary careers? (When The Observer called Roberta's, in Bushwick, we reached an acquaintance, formerly an editor at a Condé Nast magazine.)

"My day job is a little dead-end," said Mr. Spoelman. "It's a cool job ... but ultimately there is a limit to how far I can go there. So, yes, I hope so."

Mr. Haskell smiled. "I hope so, too. For Colin. I love my job, and I don't want to leave it at all. I think of this as a business I've started on the side."

Since Hugo Lindgren and Lauren Kern left New York and landed at The New York Times Magazine, as editor in chief and deputy editor, respectively, Mr. Haskell has taken a more senior role on the masthead. Has it been difficult to run a distillery on weekends?

"Maybe a little," he said. "But then I look at colleagues at New York magazine who have kids." Mr. Spoelman started laughing before his friend finished. "And, it's like, that's such a stress. Every time I think, 'Can I manage two things at once?' I think how it's just sort of expected when someone pops out a baby and suddenly everyone has to breast-feed and get a babysitter who is puking or the baby is puking. All that stuff is more stressful than this." (Adam Moss, New York's editor, is aware of his employee's whiskey production. "He's curious about it," said Mr. Haskell. "He tasted an early version.")

Earlier, Mr. Haskell walked The Observer through the distillery process. After the corn is mashed and the barley and yeast are added, the porridge-like stew sits in large tubs for six days while the yeast eats the sugars and converts them into alcohol. "It sort of smells like bread. Then once the mash is ready to go, we strain out the solids with these laundry bags," he said, pointing to netted bags hanging by the window. (A farmer from the greenmarket comes by once a week and picks up the strained corn to use as feed for his pigs.)

The strained liquid is twice distilled in 28-liter stills (micro-distilleries typically use at least 400-litter stills), with the second run closely monitored in four phases: foreshots, heads, hearts and tales. "Foreshots is the first alcohol to come out, and that's basically the poison," said Mr. Haskell. "We use it as a disinfectant or a cleaning agent. Heads have a lot of flavor, but it's also the stuff that gives you hangovers, so you don't want too much of that. Then it goes into the hearts, which we keep, and at a certain point it goes into the tails, which we don't keep. The tails have a NutraSweet-y smell to them." Every distillery creates its own parameters for how much heads or tails is mixed with their hearts. "We're very conservative," he explained.  

Once the bourbon is fully aged, they plan to experiment with other whiskeys.

"We've been playing around with making rye, but it keeps burning to the bottom of the still," said Ms. Spoelman. "It's a very persnickety grain. We have other things in the works. ..."

"But not to be talked about," Mr. Haskell said.

"What if the tape recorder was off?" asked The Observer.

"Right," said Mr. Haskell. "So, off the record ..."