Try:

data = json.load(open("data.txt", 'r'))

json.loads interprets a string as JSON data, while json.load takes a file object and reads it, then interprets it as JSON.

If you arrived at this question simply looking for a way to read a json file into memory, then use the built-in json module.

with open(file_path, 'r') as f:
    data = json.load(f)

If you have a json string in memory that needs to be parsed, use json.loads() instead:

data = json.loads(my_json_string)

Either way, now data is converted into a Python data structure (list/dictionary) that may be (deeply) nested and you'll need Python methods to manipulate it.

If you arrived here looking for ways to get values under several keys as in the OP, then the question is about looping over a Python data structure. For a not-so-deeply-nested data structure, the most readable (and possibly the fastest) way is a list / dict comprehension. For example, for the requirement in the OP, a list comprehension does the job.

store_list = [{'name': item['name'], 'city': item['city']} for item in json_array]
# [{'name': 'Mall of America', 'city': 'Bloomington'}, {'name': 'Tempe Marketplace', 'city': 'Tempe'}]

Other types of common data manipulation:

1. For a nested list where each sub-list is a list of items in the json_array.

   store_list = [[item['name'], item['city']] for item in json_array]
   # [['Mall of America', 'Bloomington'], ['Tempe Marketplace', 'Tempe']]
   

2. For a dictionary of lists where each key-value pair is a category-values in the json_array.

   store_data = {'name': [], 'city': []}
   for item in json_array:
       store_data['name'].append(item['name'])
       store_data['city'].append(item['city'])
   # {'name': ['Mall of America', 'Tempe Marketplace'], 'city': ['Bloomington', 'Tempe']}
   

3. For a "transposed" nested list where each sub-list is a "category" in json_array.

   store_list = list(store_data.values())
   # [['Mall of America', 'Tempe Marketplace'], ['Bloomington', 'Tempe']]
   

Tested on Ideone.

import json
array = '{"fruits": ["apple", "banana", "orange"]}'
data  = json.loads(array)
fruits_list = data['fruits']
print fruits_list

Hmm, doesn't json.loads do the trick?

For example, if your data is in a file,

import json
text = open('/tmp/mydata.json').read()

d = json.loads(text)

# first level fields
print d['minutes'] # or 'secret' or 'link'

# the names of each of bookmark_collections's items
print d['bookmark_collection'].keys()

# the sublinks section, as a dict
print d['bookmark_collection']['sublinks']

The output of this code (given your sample input above) is:

20
[u'sublinks', u'free_link', u'boarding_pass']
{u'link': [u'http://www.1.com', u'http://www.2.com', u'http://www.3.com'], u'name': u'sublinks'}

Which, I think, gets you what you need?