The keys to global journalism: curiosity, open-mindedness and a broad network

BBC news persenter Jackie Leonard talks about the work that goes into a daily news podcast that reaches a worldwide audience. | Continue reading


@niemanstoryboard.org | 4 years ago

How an editor guided coverage of racism in the life and death of George Floyd

A behind-the-scenes look at The Washington Post series that explored the complex societal issues raised by the life and death of George Floyd. | Continue reading


@niemanstoryboard.org | 4 years ago

A profile of police victim George Floyd also explored the health toll of racism

A Washington Post series dug past reactions to Floyd's death to probe questions about his life and what it reveals about society. | Continue reading


@niemanstoryboard.org | 4 years ago

#3 rule of pitching: Flyspeck your copy

Story pitches are often an editor's first impression of your work. Even small mistakes can undermine their confidence in your professionalism. | Continue reading


@niemanstoryboard.org | 4 years ago

A master of sports journalism tackles a new writing challenge: narrative on Facebook

Hall of fame sportswriter Dave Kindred discovers the power of "smaller," personal subjects in his episodic story posts. | Continue reading


@niemanstoryboard.org | 4 years ago

Writing past politics to a “female way of approaching things” in commentary

2012 Pulitzer Prize winner Mary Schmich of the Chicago Tribune talks about sensitive subjects, personal exposure and aging. | Continue reading


@niemanstoryboard.org | 4 years ago

“… a common appreciation for truth.”

A veteran newspaper editor and journalism professor on his appreciation for a simple, declaritive definition of democracy, and what it demands. | Continue reading


@niemanstoryboard.org | 4 years ago

A profile of one place that could be all places

ome writing comes together bit by bit, a mosaic of thoughts and observations gathered over days or months or years. Slowly or suddenly, a bigger picture emerges through a confluence of details and facts. Sometimes the writer doesn’t fully grasp what it means until the process of … | Continue reading


@niemanstoryboard.org | 4 years ago

Challenges of sourcing, safety and reporting for narrative in China

A veteran reporter in China finds it increasingly difficult to access official sources, while ordinary people can be eager to talk about their lives. | Continue reading


@niemanstoryboard.org | 4 years ago

Writing history as we live it

t has become a common refrain in these chaotic times: We’re not just reading history; we’re living it. That’s always been true, I suppose, for anyone living at any time. But I expect historians will look back on this particular patch of time and circumstances as notable — one of … | Continue reading


@niemanstoryboard.org | 4 years ago

E Pluribus Unnerved

EDITOR’S NOTE: Headlines on a story often change as the story is updated, or is published on different platforms. That apparently is what happened on a New York Times story published Nov. 4, 2002, about the mood of America on Election Day. An early online headline captured the at … | Continue reading


@niemanstoryboard.org | 4 years ago

What happened when a journalist tracked the origins of the rape evidence kit

The backlog of untested rap kits led author, journalist and podcaster Pagan Kennedy to another mystery: Who invented the kit, and why? | Continue reading


@niemanstoryboard.org | 4 years ago

The fashion critic of the New York Times sees clothing as an extension of culture

A "lucky mistake" brought vanessa Friedman into the high-end world of fashion criticism, and how it shapes and is shaped by current events. | Continue reading


@niemanstoryboard.org | 4 years ago

How the road led out of and back into journalism

With newsrooms collapsing and contracting under her, a young journalist found a new non-newsroom life, only to be lured back. | Continue reading


@niemanstoryboard.org | 4 years ago

“His work is a parable … “

Two sentences provide the nut graph — news, context and meaning — of a narrative without interrupting the flow or tone. | Continue reading


@niemanstoryboard.org | 4 years ago

Authenticity and imagery in songwriting, outlaw country style

How an introduction to Jerry Jeff Walker and his kind of music reinforced enduring elements of great storytelling. | Continue reading


@niemanstoryboard.org | 4 years ago

The project pitch that won funding from the International Women’s Media Foundation

A challenging story about modern slavery of domestic workers in the UK was possible with a grant from the IWMF. | Continue reading


@niemanstoryboard.org | 4 years ago

Pitching the IWMF: Focus on undercovered issues, think big and dare to stretch

EDITOR’S NOTE: This installment of our occasional series on pitching highlights the work of the International Women’s Media Foundation. Tomorrow we’ll feature the annotation of a successful project pitch to the IWMF.   ost freelancers don’t need to be told twice to follow the mon … | Continue reading


@niemanstoryboard.org | 4 years ago

Story roots and consequences

A key to putting policy issues in context is to track their origins and explore the likely outcom of those decisions in the future. | Continue reading


@niemanstoryboard.org | 4 years ago

Reporting beyond the first headlines

A Washington Post team went back to Kenosha, Wisconsin, after street riots to uncover a more complicated truth. | Continue reading


@niemanstoryboard.org | 4 years ago

How a reporter tracked good intentions to problematic consequences in family court

A single comment led to a year-long investigation which showed how a program meant to protect children sometimes went wrong. | Continue reading


@niemanstoryboard.org | 4 years ago

#2 rule of pitching: Respect submission protocols

Following the requirements of pitching guidelines shows professionalism, respect and your ability to be creative within a structure. | Continue reading


@niemanstoryboard.org | 4 years ago

An intimate narrative from inside a COVID-afflicted nursing home — reported by phone

California Sunday told the story of the first COVID hotspiot in the U.S. by taking readers inside Room 10 through interviews and documents. | Continue reading


@niemanstoryboard.org | 4 years ago

The struggle to define cinematic writing

No matter the term applied to narrative nonfiction, author and editor Constance Hale finds it has echoes of other forms, including cinema. | Continue reading


@niemanstoryboard.org | 4 years ago

Pitching a new editor: Don’t be too clever

A successful freelancer confesses how her "motor mouth" attempts at humor can turn off editors and tank her good ideas. | Continue reading


@niemanstoryboard.org | 4 years ago

Following a tweet to a story deep into the heart of family, race and America

A Los Angeles Times reporter blends old and new reporting techniques to tell a timely and timeless story of family and race | Continue reading


@niemanstoryboard.org | 4 years ago

3 young reporters, 1 veteran editor, a 50 mph fire, 7 days and 4,500 gripping words

How a small Oregon news staff covered breaking news of a deadly wilsfire, then teamed to deliver a narrative a week later. | Continue reading


@niemanstoryboard.org | 4 years ago

#1 rule of pitching: Study the publication

Writers need to know the publication or outlet they're pitching to, and whether or how the story is a good fit. | Continue reading


@niemanstoryboard.org | 4 years ago

Wisdom from Melissa Fay Greene about deep reporting on sensitive subjects

30 years after thousands of Romanian orphans were adopted to U.S. families, an award-winning reporter asks about their fate | Continue reading


@niemanstoryboard.org | 4 years ago

How Reveal investigated the systemic abuse of America’s caregivers

"Caregivers and takers," an investigative series by Reveal, exposed the entrenched practice of exploiting care workers for profit. | Continue reading


@niemanstoryboard.org | 4 years ago

How limitations — COVID, budgets, access and more — can spark fresh ideas

Studio Six, the production unit at Boston's GBH that is one of the top producers of content of PBS, finds ways to stay creative during COVID. | Continue reading


@niemanstoryboard.org | 4 years ago

“They told me their stories, gave them to me for keeping, which I did, always listening, always remembering.”

  iram Walker is a motherless young slave in Virginia, fathered by the lord of a plantation that is clinging to shreds of grace even as the land plays out from overplanting with tobacco, half-brother to the plantation’s  dissolute heir. Hiram dreams of his tenuous inheritance unt … | Continue reading


@niemanstoryboard.org | 4 years ago

What challenged Andrea Pitzer to write what she calls her best work ever

A trip by sea deep into the Arctic became part book research, part travelogue, part environmental study, part memoir — and all beauty. | Continue reading


@niemanstoryboard.org | 4 years ago

Introducing “The Pivot,” in which journalists find their way through industry chaos

The Pivot: A brief prelude On an early afternoon in early March in Upper Manhattan, a dozen graduate students in Columbia Journalism School’s Arts and Culture seminar gathered their notebooks and coffee mugs as class wrapped up for the week. Some lingered in the hallway to chat w … | Continue reading


@niemanstoryboard.org | 4 years ago

7 Fatal Flaws of Story Pitching

Common mistakes can undermine even the best of story ideas. We introduce them here, and will follow up with essays about each. | Continue reading


@niemanstoryboard.org | 4 years ago

Economic Hardship Reporting Project seeks story pitches that personalize poverty

he Economic Hardship Reporting Project (EHRP) was born from a situation of precisely that: financial insecurity. Barbara Ehrenreich, author of the seminal 1996 work, “Nickel and Dimed,” co-founded the journalism non-profit in 2012, as Americans were trudging through the wreckage … | Continue reading


@niemanstoryboard.org | 4 years ago

How reporting through time and place reveals character

ESPN writer Wright Thompson returns to an old subject — basketball superstar Michael Jordan — and finds a new story in his family roots. | Continue reading


@niemanstoryboard.org | 4 years ago

One murder. Two narrative forms.

A magazine writer and a documentary filmmater collaborated on reporting the same 34-year-old cold-case murder, then each told it through their own medium. | Continue reading


@niemanstoryboard.org | 4 years ago

The power of a pronoun

How advances in women's rights can be see through the use of the simplest of langauge: Pronouns. | Continue reading


@niemanstoryboard.org | 4 years ago

How a high school journalist geared up to cover riots in Portland, Oregon

A 17-year-old with a passion for civics and current events felt compelled to provide eye-witness coverage of clashes between police and protestors. | Continue reading


@niemanstoryboard.org | 4 years ago

Rewriting the “hero’s journey” to fit a feminine narrative

A writer finds that the classic story narrative is at odds with most women's reality. Even the "heroine's journey" needs new consideration. | Continue reading


@niemanstoryboard.org | 4 years ago

Two veteran newswomen learn podcasting to retell the story of women’s suffrage

Award-winning journalists Ellen Goodman (Pulitzer) and Lynn Sherr (Peabody) team up to tell the story of the 19th Amendment through the intimacy of audio. | Continue reading


@niemanstoryboard.org | 4 years ago

Bearing witness inside a funeral home at the pitch of the COVID pandemic

A team from Vanity Fair profiled a staff of overwhelmed funeral workers who were determined to put dignity and humanity ahead of the grim toll of death. | Continue reading


@niemanstoryboard.org | 4 years ago

Writing rituals: Superstition or productivity?

Quirky habits — from the type of pencil to a candle on the desk — can actually help writers focus and summon the creative Muse. | Continue reading


@niemanstoryboard.org | 4 years ago

Extraordinary access: A reporter follows a police officer on a mental health call

Pulitzer winner Hannah Dreier of the Washington Post learns to trust events and find a deep narrative in a tight timeframe. | Continue reading


@niemanstoryboard.org | 4 years ago

The enduring power of John Hersey’s “Hiroshima:” the first “nonfiction novel”

Hersey's account of survivors of the atomic bomb is still taught as the ultimate masterpiece in narrative reporting and taut, umvarnished writing. | Continue reading


@niemanstoryboard.org | 4 years ago

How the “Beyonce of earthquakes” uses storytelling to explain science

A seismologist embraces storytelling techniques to relay messages about risk and response to disasters like earthquakes and coronavirus. | Continue reading


@niemanstoryboard.org | 4 years ago

When the bounds of conventional journalism are too tight

Marquee narrative writer Tom Junod delivers a Stephen King-esque mystery with "The Hero of Goodall Park," and rejects one-size-fits-all detachment. | Continue reading


@niemanstoryboard.org | 4 years ago