Finding lessons for literary journalism in the poetry of Rust Belt chronicler Phil Levine

I read poetry. Chalk it up to an English degree, perhaps too much Milton or Wordsworth as an undergrad, or a line or two that I once might have penned one dark and stormy night. But as a journalist, I find poetry something of a closeted pleasure, hard to explain or justify, espec … | Continue reading


@niemanstoryboard.org | 7 years ago

The power of historical nonfiction: “Let me tell you what happened right on this spot a long time ago”

This week on Storyboard we spotlighted two pieces of historical nonfiction, with one telling the story of America’s first detectives, back in the time of Charles Dickens, and the other reaching back just 40 years, to the brutal Argentine dictatorship that saw thousands of people … | Continue reading


@niemanstoryboard.org | 7 years ago

5(ish) Questions: Bridget Huber and “The Living Disappeared” of Argentina

In her piece “The Living Disappeared” for The California Sunday magazine, reporter Bridget Huber turns the complicated, still-unfolding story of the missing children from Argentina’s military dictatorship into a relatable narrative about loss. The heroine of the story, 91-year-ol … | Continue reading


@niemanstoryboard.org | 7 years ago

“NOVEMBER, noun. The eleventh twelfth of a weariness.”

Why is it great? I’ve never read Bierce’s satirical dictionary, but after coming across this sentence, it’s on the list.  With just a few words, he conjures up the dreariness of the month (with something quintessentially dreary: fractions). It’s no longer the autumn of bright col … | Continue reading


@niemanstoryboard.org | 7 years ago

Matthew Pearl and “Into the Shadows” (Filed under: You can’t make this stuff up)

Matthew Pearl is a sucker for underdog stories, origin stories and untold stories. Those all came together when the author of best-selling historical fiction thrillers such as “The Dante Club” and “The Poe Shadow” asked: Who were America’s first detectives?  And what did they do? … | Continue reading


@niemanstoryboard.org | 7 years ago

We look under the storytelling hood, with great tips on pitching *and* writing

We really looked under the hood of literary journalism this week, with wonderful tips on how to pitch and write your stories. In the second installment of our series “The Pitch,” a Smithsonian Magazine talks about her likes and pet peeves. In this week’s One Great Sentence, Poynt … | Continue reading


@niemanstoryboard.org | 7 years ago

Reporter Tom French and “the three most beautiful words in the English language: What happens next?”

Note from Storyboard editor Kari Howard: Reporter Tom French recently spoke at the annual Power of Storytelling conference in Bucharest, Romania. His speech, a remarkable feat of storytelling about storytelling, is so powerful, we’re running the entire transcript verbatim. Trust … | Continue reading


@niemanstoryboard.org | 7 years ago

“Before the aurora borealis appears, the sensitive needles of compasses all over the world are restless for hours, agitating on their pins in airplanes and ships, trembling in desk drawers, in attics, in boxes on shelves.”

Why is it great? I admire the way Dillard turns a piece of natural science into a narrative of anticipation during which no human being … | Continue reading


@niemanstoryboard.org | 7 years ago

The Pitch: How to get the attention of a senior editor at Smithsonian Magazine

As a senior editor commissioning science features for Smithsonian Magazine, Jennie Rothenberg Gritz gets tons of freelance queries. Yet few cold pitches result in an article. Why not? “They’re often stories that should be told, but they’re not being framed as good stories, with g … | Continue reading


@niemanstoryboard.org | 7 years ago

“Won’t it be a fine day when anthology specifically focused on women journalists won’t make any sense?”

This week we spotlighted talented women on Storyboard — be they writers, performers or proto-feminists of the 18th century. I love this quote from Adrian LaBlanc, one of the women included in “The Stories We Tell” anthology below: “I won’t be here to witness it, but won’t it be a … | Continue reading


@niemanstoryboard.org | 7 years ago

5(ish) Questions: Holly Gleason and “Woman Walk the Line: How the Women in Country Music Changed Our Lives”

We all know music has the power to change us. I sometimes indulge in a “Sliding Doors” reverie, wondering what path my life might have taken if I hadn’t heard the song that set me irrevocably in the direction I ended up going back when I was 17. Holly Gleason, the editor of a new … | Continue reading


@niemanstoryboard.org | 7 years ago

“Taught from their infancy that beauty is woman’s sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison.”

Why is it great? Take a look at the publication date: 1792. That’s more than two centuries ago, and two things are remarkable about this fact. 1) That Wollstonecraft, the mother of “Frankenstein” author Mary Shelley, was such a terrific feminist back then. And 2) that in many res … | Continue reading


@niemanstoryboard.org | 7 years ago

5(ish) Questions: Patsy Sims and “The Stories We Tell: Classic True Tales by America’s Greatest Women Journalists”

The 1967 edition of the annual “Best Magazine Articles” anthology has six names on the cover: Gay Talese, Gore Vidal, Stephen Becker, Conrad Aiken, Conrad Knickerbocker and Tom Wolfe. Underneath those names it says, “and others.” You open the book, and see that one of the “others … | Continue reading


@niemanstoryboard.org | 7 years ago

For Halloween week, supernatural podcasts and the haunting of Joan Didion

For Halloween week, we did a few spooky-themed posts, including an interview with the creator of the scary true-stories podcast “Lore.”  This week’s One Great Sentence is a haunting one (in both senses of the word) from Mark Twain, who is one of the all-time masters of the one-li … | Continue reading


@niemanstoryboard.org | 7 years ago

This American Afterlife: Aaron Mahnke and the spooky podcast (and TV show) “Lore”

Barely three years ago, Aaron Mahnke, a part-time horror-thriller writer, sat at his computer and started to drag a document to the trashcan. Just as he was about dispose of the sprawling essay he’d written with outtakes from his supernatural research, he paused, letting the docu … | Continue reading


@niemanstoryboard.org | 7 years ago

“Then away out in the woods I heard that kind of a sound that a ghost makes when it wants to tell about something that’s on its mind and can’t make itself understood, and so can’t rest easy in its grave, and has to go about that way every night grieving.”

Why is it great? For Halloween, I decided to use this wonderfully spooky line from Mark Twain (who in his writing and his speaking was a true master of the Great Sentence). Starting with the rhythm of “away out in the woods,” it has a ghost-story-around-the-campfire feel: Gather … | Continue reading


@niemanstoryboard.org | 7 years ago

Reporting on racism in America: One writer confronted with rage, another driven by it

These words from journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones sum up this week’s posts on racism and white supremacism better than I ever could: “The truth is even though this is fundamental and foundational to living in the United States, this is a history and a truth that most Americans are … | Continue reading


@niemanstoryboard.org | 7 years ago

Nikole Hannah-Jones on reporting about racial inequality: “What drives me is rage”

New York Times Magazine writer Nikole Hannah-Jones doesn’t pretend to be an objective observer of her subject: racial segregation. “I’m not, and none of us are,” she said of journalists during a speech at the annual Power of Storytelling conference in Bucharest, Romania, last wee … | Continue reading


@niemanstoryboard.org | 7 years ago

“Along with these tots and second-honeymooners, there were Harvard freshmen, giving off that peculiar nervous glow created when a quantity of insouciance is saturated with insecurity; thick-necked Army officers with brass on their shoulders and lead in their voices; pepperings of priests; perfumed bouquets of Roxbury Fabian fans; shiny salesmen from Albany and Fall River; and those gray, hoarse men—taxi-drivers, slaughterers, and bartenders who will continue to click through the turnstiles long after everyone else has deserted to television and tramporamas.”

Why is it great? Sadly, the Red Sox aren’t in the World Series, but this beautiful line from a classic Updike piece captures the crowd at Fenway like a camera. But it’s a camera that also has the ability to read emotions. The line about the Harvard freshmen is priceless. And can … | Continue reading


@niemanstoryboard.org | 7 years ago

Vice News correspondent Elle Reeve and “Charlottesville: Race and Terror”

Vice News’ 22-minute documentary “Charlottesville: Race and Terror” provided a chilling look at the white supremacists behind the violent “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Va., in August. It quickly went viral. But Elle Reeve, the Vice correspondent who took viewers beh … | Continue reading


@niemanstoryboard.org | 7 years ago

The power of immersion journalism — for a year, or the moment we’re living in now

Immersion journalism usually means the kind of reporting that Ted Genoways does: He and his photographer wife spent a year practically living with a soybean farmer and his family in Nebraska to give us a close-up look at the people who bring us our food. But some younger reporter … | Continue reading


@niemanstoryboard.org | 7 years ago

5(ish) Questions: Ted Genoways and his year-long embed on a family farm

For more than 15 years now, Ted Genoways has been exploring narratives of how America reaps its food. In 2001, Genoways, a contributing editor/editor at large at On Earth and Pacific Standard, published an award-winning sequence of poems about his grandfather’s work in the stocky … | Continue reading


@niemanstoryboard.org | 7 years ago

“There was a kind of autumnal stain in the air that reminded me of the smell of leather work gloves, a high-school locker room at homecoming, the inside of an ancient canvas tent.”

Why is it great? Chabon has tapped into that greatest of sensory effects: the ability of smells to take you back to a place, a moment, a memory. The last one, in particular, works its magic on me. The mildewy smell of an old canvas tent may not be scientifically pleasant, but it’ … | Continue reading


@niemanstoryboard.org | 7 years ago

Journalist Dena Takruri on being millennial, Arab American and a woman on camera

For Dena Takruri, the power of journalism rests on its ability to give voice to the voiceless. As a Muslim and Arab American, Takruri grew up watching the news and saw how underrepresented, and often misrepresented, people of color and marginalized communities really were. “As a … | Continue reading


@niemanstoryboard.org | 7 years ago

This week Storyboard launched a series on the unicorn of longform: the story pitch

I’m so excited about this series we’ve just launched on Storyboard called “The Pitch,” in which we try to demystify the unicorn of longform: the story pitch. Contributor Katia Savchuk will talk to writers and editors about their tips and pet peeves, and even annotate some success … | Continue reading


@niemanstoryboard.org | 7 years ago

5(ish) Questions: “Bodega Stories” creator talks about her love for the corner store

One of my earliest childhood memories was having cash in my hand and roaming a baqala, or a corner store, in my Middle Eastern hometown. I remember the South Asian employee who patiently watched me decide which treat to buy and, once I tiptoed my selection to the counter, helped … | Continue reading


@niemanstoryboard.org | 7 years ago

“The private estate was far enough away from the explosion so that its bamboos, pines, laurel, and maples were still alive, and the green place invited refugees — partly because they believed that if the Americans came back, they would bomb only buildings;  partly because the foliage seemed a center of coolness and life, and the estate’s exquisitely precise rock gardens, with their quiet pools and arching bridges, were very Japanese, normal, secure;  and also partly (according to some who were there) because of an irresistible, atavistic urge to hide under leaves.”

Why is it great? Great writers fear not the long sentence, and here is proof.  If a short sentence speaks a gospel truth, then a … | Continue reading


@niemanstoryboard.org | 7 years ago

The Pitch: Jason Fagone on Landing “The Willy Wonka of Pot” in Grantland

Magazine pitches are an elusive species. You hear talk of them at journalism conferences and in freelancer forums. You see evidence of their existence in the stories they beget. But it’s rare to catch a glimpse of a specimen in the wild. This all manages to give the narrative pit … | Continue reading


@niemanstoryboard.org | 7 years ago

A mass shooting in the news, and loss also in longform — but always, always hope

Loss was too much with us this week, as we learned of yet another mass shooting that beggars the imagination. And it’s a theme of this week’s posts, too. In India, The New York Times’ Ellen Barry writes about a man who murders his wife and gets away with it (until her story was p … | Continue reading


@niemanstoryboard.org | 7 years ago

New York’s “Subway Therapist” and his collage of a city’s hopes and fears

The 14th Street subway station was hot and noisy with gossip and foot traffic, with a lingering scent of something musty I couldn’t immediately identify. I could hear mediocre performers play instruments in the distance, the subway’s automated announcements weaving into the sound … | Continue reading


@niemanstoryboard.org | 7 years ago

“We all live in a house on fire, no fire department to call; no way out, just the upstairs window to look out of while the fire burns the house down with us trapped, locked in it.”

Why is it great? This sentence is one of the most vivid metaphors I’ve ever read. It captures the helplessness of a life of desperation, where you can’t even jump from the window, just stare out of it, seeing the life you might have had while the flames and smoke come ever closer … | Continue reading


@niemanstoryboard.org | 7 years ago

Ellen Barry and “How to Get Away with Murder in Small-Town India”

In March, The New York Times announced that its India-based South Asia bureau chief, Ellen Barry, would relocate to London to become chief international correspondent. Accordingly, Barry loaded everything she owned onto a container ship in Mumbai that was already rounding Cape Ho … | Continue reading


@niemanstoryboard.org | 7 years ago

Zooming in on two of America’s biggest stories: culture wars and opioid epidemic

Two of the biggest stories in America today are the culture wars that seem to be deepening the divide in the country and the opioid crisis that is devastating a huge swath of rural and urban America. When it comes to the latter, The Cincinnati Enquirer did a standout job with a h … | Continue reading


@niemanstoryboard.org | 7 years ago

“Something in the world links faces and leaves and rivers and woods and wind together and makes them a string of medallions with all our faces on them, worn forever round our necks, kin.”

Why is it great? Written long before every person carried a camera, before Facebook, back when “streaming” was just what water did as it coursed through its bed, Goyen, raised in a small town in East Texas, believed we could carry our stories and memories with us, wear them like … | Continue reading


@niemanstoryboard.org | 7 years ago

5(ish) Questions: Texas journalist Krys Boyd and the art of the radio interview

If interviewing is an art, Krys Boyd has had plenty of practice with her paintbrush. For a remarkable five days a week for the past 11 years, the Texas journalist has been illustrating the depth and context of current events for the public radio show “Think.” Sometimes she prepar … | Continue reading


@niemanstoryboard.org | 7 years ago

Notable Narrative: The Cincinnati Enquirer’s stunning “Seven Days of Heroin”

As far as Terry DeMio knows, she’s the only journalist in the country with the title “heroin reporter.” She’s been covering the opioid epidemic for The Cincinnati Enquirer for five years, including two on the beat full time. Yet DeMio and her editors felt they needed to do more t … | Continue reading


@niemanstoryboard.org | 7 years ago

For film week, home movies and drive-ins (and David Foster Wallace on David Lynch)

It was a lot of fun focusing on movies this week on Storyboard. Each day I tweeted out some of the best-written lines in filmdom — including the best one-word line ever: “Rosebud.” Here on the site, we explored the concept of documentary film as “home movie,” and talked to a phot … | Continue reading


@niemanstoryboard.org | 7 years ago

5(ish) Questions: Photographer Lindsay Rickert and “Drive-In America”

The big screens on suburban, prairie and desert roadsides once beaconed families and lovers. Now they’re mostly tattered and forlorn, a reminder of America’s midcentury love affair with the open road, the automobile and  the Hollywood dream factory. Three years ago, photographer … | Continue reading


@niemanstoryboard.org | 7 years ago

“I know all about reporters, Walter. A lot of daffy buttinskis running around without a nickel in their pockets and for what? So a million hired girls and motormen’s wives’ll know what’s going on.”

Why is it great? Yes, it’s three sentences. But it’s one brilliant summation of journalists, from the best-written movie about journalists of all time. God, the banter in the screenplay! I love how this line has hilarious putdowns like “daffy buttinskis” but at the same time cont … | Continue reading


@niemanstoryboard.org | 7 years ago

The big tent that is storytelling: embracing the richness (and beauty) of its diversity

It shouldn’t be surprising that storytelling was the focus this week on Storyboard: That’s what we do. But I love the variety of the storytelling on offer. A narrative about a recanted abuse allegation. A book connecting the fate of mussels to the fate of all of us. A remarkable … | Continue reading


@niemanstoryboard.org | 7 years ago

5(ish) Questions: Abbie Gascho Landis and the surprising climate book “Immersion”

The photograph on the cover of  Abbie Gascho Landis’ “Immersion” is the first hint that the book is going to be surprising. The image is at once coy and inviting, a puckered pout that is somehow so voluptuous that the unwitting passerby might be slightly scandalized to glimpse it … | Continue reading


@niemanstoryboard.org | 7 years ago

“If the history of the earth’s tides should one day be written by some observer of the universe, it would no doubt be said that they reached their greatest grandeur and power in the younger days of Earth, and that they slowly grew feebler and less imposing until one day they ceased to be.”

Why is it great? Few authors have written as magnificently about nature as Rachel Carson, and this sentence is a good example.  Its strength is not in form but content.  It revealed to me something I did not know — that at one time in the history of Earth, the tides were much mor … | Continue reading


@niemanstoryboard.org | 7 years ago

Notable Narrative: The Marshall Project’s Maurice Chammah and “The Accusation”

In the opening of Maurice Chammah’s story “The Accusation,” jointly published by Esquire and The Marshall Project, we meet Katie Spencer Tetz, a 25-year-old woman who learns that her father is getting out prison. He’s been locked up for nearly two decades for brutally molesting h … | Continue reading


@niemanstoryboard.org | 7 years ago

Sometimes journalism and literature are controversial; sometimes that’s a good thing

I decided to try another “theme” week on Storyboard, after having such fun with the Southern focus last week. For this one, we took a look at controversial stories, books, writers and themes. From D.H. Lawrence’s “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” to Alex Tizon’s last story, the incendiar … | Continue reading


@niemanstoryboard.org | 7 years ago

An alt-weekly editor steps up to the plate to back a freelancer’s controversial story

Like most journalists today, Britni de la Cretaz is accustomed to being on the receiving end of comments from critical readers and opinionated trolls. As a freelance writer who frequently tackles important and uncomfortable subjects, both about herself and about U.S. society, she … | Continue reading


@niemanstoryboard.org | 7 years ago

“A woman has to live her life, or live to repent not having lived it.”

Why is it great? For “Controversy Week” on Storyboard, I chose a sentence from one of the most controversial books of the 20th century. “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” was shocking on so many levels when it was written: for a woman’s infidelity to her husband; for the pleasure she took … | Continue reading


@niemanstoryboard.org | 7 years ago

The late Alex Tizon and “My Family’s Slave”: his first memory, and his last byline

The story of the woman called Lola begins and ends with ashes. Ashes that “filled a plastic box about the size of a toaster.” Ashes sheltered in a canvas tote bag from a suburb north of tech-hip Seattle to a rice-farming village deep in the poverty of the Philippines. Ashes final … | Continue reading


@niemanstoryboard.org | 7 years ago

It’s Southern Week on Storyboard: Read on for some great regional storytelling

It was Southern Week here on Storyboard, spotlighting some wonderful regional journalism and writing. It’s been fun tweeting out great lines from famous Southern writers, including this one from William Faulkner: “I’m trying to say it all in one sentence, between one cap and one … | Continue reading


@niemanstoryboard.org | 7 years ago