By Jacqui Banaszynski hopeful-news detour from a study of the art and craft of story work, to the shaky business that supports that work. In this case, To summarize it, I borrow from our sister publication, Nieman Reports: A nonpartisan group of 22 foundations today announced the … | Continue reading
By Jacqui Banaszynski njoy an end-of-summer delight, courtesy of Ashley Lodato, a columnist for the Methow Valley News in the far north Cascades of Washington state. Lodato’s writing has caught our attention before; we featured a Why’s This So Good analysis of an essay she wrote … | Continue reading
By Jacqui Banaszynski ne of the back-to-school things I looked forward to in grade school was the Weekly Reader, a tab-sized newspaper that was handed out in class. I suppose it carried some features and news stories. But I most loved two things: The catalog of recommended books … | Continue reading
By Talia Richman efore our first meeting about how to tackle a tick-tock of the mass shooting at an outlet mall in Allen, Texas, this spring, Kelley Benham French sent over an annotated copy of David Maraniss’ 9/11 Washington Post narrative, published five days after the attacks. … | Continue reading
By Trevor Pyle hen a former student killed 19 students and two teachers in a Uvalde, Texas, elementary school last year, the ache spread worldwide. One who felt the pain keenly was Kim Garza, a professor and novelist who grew up in Uvalde. The author of “The Last Karankawas” and … | Continue reading
By Jacqui Banaszynski magine the directive in the image above is not an end game, but a prompt. What if you added something more descriptive? Read more broadly. Read more thoughtfully. Read more openly. Or, my mantra: Read more like a writer. I’ve no doubt mentioned that before — … | Continue reading
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is one of two posts on the intimate interview with tennis stars Martina Navratilova and Chris Evert by Sally Jenkins of The Washington Post. You can also read our analysis of what made the story so special. By Esther Landhuis barely follow women’s tennis. Yet … | Continue reading
By Jacqui Banaszynski y heart goes out, along with favorite story moments, to all who knew, worked with and loved Bob Giles. It also goes out to those of you who were not so blessed. If you are part of the Storyboard community, you have been touched by Bob whether you knew it or … | Continue reading
By Jacqui Banaszynski ccording to my pre-Wordle morning scans of social media in recent days, it’s back-to-school time. That seems awfully early to me (What happened to waiting until after Labor Day?), but my own teaching career found me in front of a classroom by mid-August. And … | Continue reading
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is one of two posts analyzing the stand-out profile of tennis greats Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova by Washington Post sports columnist Sally Jenkins. A Q&A with Jenkins about her relationship and interviews with the athletes will post next. By Dale Keige … | Continue reading
By Jacqui Banaszynski t the many writing workshops I lead, the primary struggles reporters raise involve, duh, writing. But when six health-reporting fellows gathered recently, the challenges they brought to the fore centered around reporting. And these were not about exotic repo … | Continue reading
By Jacqui Banaszynski eporter friends after swap tales about the stories and tips they picked up from cabbies when they travel on assignments. That’s seldom been successful for me. First, I’m not big on man-on-the-street type reporting; it usually feels superficial, like hearing … | Continue reading
By Michael Ollove couldn’t bring myself to speak to Stephen King. That Stephen King. The Titan of Terror. The Behemoth of the Bestseller List. Maine’s Master of the Macabre. I had him in my sights, and I let him get away. Over and over again. I was a Baltimore Sun reporter at t … | Continue reading
By Polly Basore Wenzl icture a sandy-haired Dennis the Menace, 11 years old. He wandered into News Connect, the Wichita Journalism Collaborative’s pop-up newsroom, in the downtown library on a recent day. Our collaborative – a partnership of 11 local news and community organizati … | Continue reading
By Jacqui Banaszynski rison stories are a special challenge for journalists. The gold standards of journalism are relevance and relatability. But it can be hard for many readers and listeners, if not most, to relate to people who have been incarcerated for things we like to think … | Continue reading
By Lauren Kessler e’re sitting on folding chairs around a scarred table, the linoleum veneer curling at the edges, in an airless, windowless room. It’s me and nine men, ranging in age from 38 to 81, all of whom, decades ago, did something that landed them here, in a maximum secur … | Continue reading
By Jacqui Banaszynski verybody talks about the weather — more than ever these days. But not everybody gets death threats for their comments. Yet that’s what happened to Chris Gloninger, a chief meteorologist who had moved from his native Massachusetts to take a job in Iowa. He wa … | Continue reading
By Carly Stern very reporter has one of those story ideas simmering on the back burner that they simply can’t let drop. For Raquel Rutledge, it started with a house fire. The fire, which damaged a two-story rental house in the Milwaukee suburb of West Allis, made headlines when i … | Continue reading
By Jacqui Banaszynski fter our mother died, my brothers and I gathered to clean out and sell our childhood home. An inevitable part of that process was to sort through her lifetime of marriage, motherhood, friendships, part-time jobs and household hobbies. Serviceable items were … | Continue reading
By Chip Scanlan t was the stuff of great narrative, a dramatic saga with conflicting storylines and no clear resolution: In October 2020, British authorities and the media reported that seven stowaways from Nigeria were aboard a mammoth oil tanker as it approached the British coa … | Continue reading
By Jacqui Banaszynski or five years now, I’ve been acutely aware of the arrival of Friday mornings. Not because my datebook tells me so. Not because the weekend is ahead. But because I am suddenly eager to do the all the household chores I avoid all week: Sweeping, scrubbing and … | Continue reading
By Jacqui Banaszynski hen the folks at Webster-Merriam embraced the use of “they/them” as singular pronouns, the reaction from those in the writing world ranged from relief to indignation to celebration. Relief: No more need to torture sentences to follow grammatically correct ru … | Continue reading
By Lauren Kessler e’ve got a paper to get out.” That’s the matter-of-fact directive from Zoe Toperosky to a roomful of reporters and editors. She is talking through a mask in that just-loud-enough, crisply enunciated way that veteran mask-wearers have perfected during the past th … | Continue reading
By Jacqui Banaszynski he recent issues I could write about for Storyboard are many: the pros and cons of using a thesaurus; how we both hunger for and dread feedback on our writing; navigating the ethics of anonymous sources and, alas, the latest round of disheartening layoffs in … | Continue reading
By Trevor Pyle or state legislator Karen Berg of Kentucky, the fight against anti-trans legislation was entwined with the memory of her transgender son, Henry. For reporter Willian Wan of The Washington Post, telling both halves of that story was an opportunity, a challenge and a … | Continue reading
By Chloe Page or about the last 15 years I have struggled with the nagging need to share a story of which I have been a part, but didn’t know how how. I phrased that awkwardly — “a story of which I have been a part” — because I couldn’t quite bring myself to say: […] | Continue reading
By Erik Ness ost streets worth walking — and bars worth drinking in — contain multitudes. Writers love to have choices. But with so many options available, the challenge becomes guiding a reader into both the soul of a place and the heart of a piece. That’s the beauty of Cynthia … | Continue reading
By Chip Scanlan ournalism, by its very nature, focuses on the now — the events and people making the news today. But powerful stories can be found by mining the past to add fresh material and context to what had once been a sketchy breaking story, abandoned after a few news cycle … | Continue reading
EDITOR’S NOTE: In the spirit of transparency, Korrina Duffy wrote this post after attending a weeklong writing workshop I teach through the Madeline Island School of Arts. By Korrina Duffy he more specific, the more universal.” That’s a paradoxical truth about writing that a smal … | Continue reading
By Jacqui Banaszynski ast week life brought me one of those full-circle gifts. I’m hosting my friend Cristian Lupsa for a few days in Seattle and at the mountain cabin. I met Cristian when he was a masters student at the Missouri School of Journalism. I later worked with him for … | Continue reading
By Chip Scanlan hen one journalist falls, others rise to take up their cause. That’s the animating principle behind a long history of journalists completing untold stories left behind by murdered or jailed reporters. Such memorial work gained attention 1976, when 38 journalists f … | Continue reading
By Jacqui Banaszynski still remember, with a wince and a laugh, the time I was fretting over a conference keynote. I had X amount of time, X-plus amount of material and X-to-the-10th-degree amount of insecurity. That was not a new feeling for me when speaking in public — or writi … | Continue reading
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the final post in our focused series on the core elements of narrative by nonfiction writer and teacher Lauren Kessler. Previous posts provided an overview of the power of narrative, how to build a story through scenes and how to report and write memorable … | Continue reading
EDITOR’S NOTE: “The Best Audio Storytelling: 2022” is a newly released audiobook compendium of English-language nonfiction. The collection’s curator, Julia Barton of Pushkin Industries, spoke with creators of work in the collection about their storytelling choices and challenges. … | Continue reading
By Jacqui Banaszynski or four decades now, I’ve laid down a motivational challenge for myself: Can I be involved in at least one journalism project each year that wins a significant award? Regional award is ok. National, far better. I’m sure that sounds like hubris, or at least i … | Continue reading
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the third post in our focused series on the core elements of narrative by nonfiction writer and teacher Lauren Kessler. Previous posts provided an overview of the power of narrative and how to build a story through scenes. A final post in the series will ex … | Continue reading
By Madeline Bodin rowse through a year of articles on The Atavist Magazine website and you will see stories about a diverse collection of topics: swimming cows, abuse at an elite high school, a fossil tooth,* a spy, a cult and a daring escape across the Bering Sea. “The thing uni … | Continue reading
EDITOR’S NOTE: “The Best Audio Storytelling: 2022” is a newly released audiobook compendium of English-language nonfiction. The collection’s curator, Julia Barton of Pushkin Industries, spoke with creators of work in the collection about their storytelling choices and challenges. … | Continue reading
By Madeline Bodin rofiles are the bread and butter of nearly every feature writer at nearly every type of publication, from trade magazines, to national newspapers, to the glossiest of newsstand magazines. In the rush of deadlines, it’s tempting to see a profile as a one-source s … | Continue reading
EDITOR’S NOTE: This month, Pushkin Industries published “The Best Audio Storytelling: 2022,” an audiobook compendium of English-language nonfiction. The collection’s curator, Pushkin’s Julia Barton spoke with creators of work in the collection about their storytelling choices an … | Continue reading
By Jacqui Banaszynski ne of the tragic realities and outrages of life in America has become the steady drumbeat of gun deaths. The news takes on a Gatling-gun pace — and that reference is intentional. We are all being assaulted by a lethal combination of political indifference an … | Continue reading
By Trevor Pyle n opening paragraphs of her Chicago Reader piece about six deaths in Chicago last year, Katie Prout makes a rare and daring admission: She reveals that she keeps an altar and remakes it whenever a person she knows dies. She includes coins as one of its ingredients, … | Continue reading
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the second post in our focused series on the core elements of narrative by narrative journalist and teacher Lauren Kessler. Future posts will explore the development of character and crafting of story endings. By Lauren Kessler passage from a true story: In … | Continue reading
EDITOR’S NOTE: A revival of the Storyboard series “Audio Danger” updates the craft of narrative podcasts and introduces a new best-of collection. This introductory post will be followed by four posts that analyze outstanding podcasts and interview the journalists who made them. B … | Continue reading
By Jacqui Banaszynski reminder about caution on the keyboard was inspired by last week’s news of the arrest of the Air National Guardsman accused of leaking Pentagon documents that contained sensitive U.S. intelligence reports. I was driving to a conference the day the news broke … | Continue reading
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the table-setter to a series of posts in the coming week that reprise the earlier Storyboard series “Audio Danger,” which include interviews with top narrative podcasters on their craft and the status of the form. By Samantha Hodder as 2023 dawned, it occur … | Continue reading
By Madeline Bodin fter reading a remarkable work of nonfiction, have you ever wished you could learn exactly how the writer created what you just read? I don’t think I’m alone in being intrigued by how the stories that move me came about. We all juggle required assignments with p … | Continue reading
By Jacqui Banaszynski o anything often enough and long enough and you probably, at times, fall into the occasional rut. I don’t know of any fellow journalist, no matter their age or experience, who hasn’t lamented that their work feels stale. But the operative word there is “occa … | Continue reading