EDITOR’S NOTE: For this installment in Storyboard’s occasional series on effective editing, we bring readers a conversation with an independent editor who works one-on-one with writers and has built a suite of services on his own. By Carly Stern lenn Stout was about 14 when he re … | Continue reading
By Trevor Pyle homas Curwen is one of those newspaper veterans who has done it all. During his 40-year career at the Los Angeles Times, he’s served as an outdoors editor, a Book Review editor and a features editor. He’s done news stories big and small, and was on the team that wo … | Continue reading
EDITOR’S NOTE: For this installment in Storyboard’s occasional series on effective editing, we bring readers a conversation with an independent editor who works one-on-one with writers and has built a suite of services on his own. By Carly Stern t’s common for people to think of … | Continue reading
By Trevor Pyle hen Ruby Cramer of The Washington Post drove up to Norfolk, Mass., it was in pursuit of a story that couldn’t be more timely — or timeless. Cramer had seen local news reports about the small town and fractures over an emergency migrant shelter to be opened in a for … | Continue reading
The Nobels announced last week mostly honor achievement in the sciences (with one prize for literature), but if you think no bells ring for the narrative nonfiction practitioner, think again. The True Story Award recognizes exceptional journalism from across the globe, published … | Continue reading
By Dale Keiger once estimated how many bylined pieces I’ve published in my five decades of scribbling for money. Including everything from 300-word bleats to 8,000-word slabs, I believe I’ve written somewhere around 3,000 stories. Now imagine how many interviews I have conducted … | Continue reading
By Jacqui Banaszynski ore than a few friends have asked what I planned to write my last essay as the editor of Nieman Storyboard (published Sept. 27, 2024). One headed his email: “Here’s to a memorable closing newsletter.” (This from a guy who knows how hard it is to write things … | Continue reading
By Madeline Bodin eattle-based freelance journalist Wudan Yan is a founder, producer and host of The Writers’ Co-op podcast. She’s a business coach, a content marketing writer and an advocate for fair and prompt pay for freelancers. She’s a knitter of beautiful sweaters, a rock c … | Continue reading
By Laurie Hertzel om Whipple’s recent story in the Times of London about the reappearance of beavers in Devon, England, could have been a deeply serious science piece, laden with facts, numbers and jargon, except for the fact that it was Whipple who wrote it. The science editor a … | Continue reading
By Jacqui Banaszynski ast Friday, my penultimate Friday newsletter as editor of Storyboard invited you to consider whether you’re the right next person for the role. (I wrote that sentence as a small insider wink at my treasured word-nerd friends out there — those who know what p … | Continue reading
EDITOR’S NOTE: A version of this piece is co-posted with our friends at the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute at the Missouri School of Journalism. By Grace Kenyon hen I went to journalism school after studying piano performance as an undergrad, I encountered a fair number … | Continue reading
By Kim Cross hree weeks after the nation’s deadliest wildfire in a century blackened a huge swath in Maui, freelance journalist Erika Hayasaki felt called to go there and tell the story. At home in Southern California, she saw dramatic TV coverage and news stories about escapes, … | Continue reading
reat job for the right person who has the right passion and knowledge about this important work we call narrative nonfiction: The Nieman Foundation for Journalism, based at Harvard University, is in the hunt for the next editor of Storyboard, the global online resource that cover … | Continue reading
By Jacqui Banaszynski reporter friend once told me that interviewing, for him, was a “full-body sport.” His toss-off comment was a Yes! moment for me. It crystallized why, when I finished a interview, I was so drained. The exhaustion was more than the residual tension that is a s … | Continue reading
By Jacqui Banaszynski could paint this 100 different ways.” Artist Sarah Yeoman blithely delivered this claim at a watercolor workshop I attended. She was demonstrating small painting studies focused on value and color. Students were crowded around her easel on the back deck of a … | Continue reading
By Jacqui Banaszynski m still here, officially, for another three weeks (through the end of September). After that, I hope to show up on the Nieman Storyboard site as a contributor in ways that support the next editor. Despite the forces working against independent journalism, th … | Continue reading
By Liz Seegert was scrolling the social media platform Threads when I happened upon one of those ledes that makes you keep reading. Which is what I did — through 5,000 words of story about problematic business practices at one of America’s most beloved national parks. The story, … | Continue reading
By Richard Read fter six days crossing the Soviet Union on the Trans-Siberian railway, I stumbled from the chill of a winter evening into the warmth of The New York Times Moscow bureau. The fragrance of home cooking filled the upstairs office in a rundown building near the Kremli … | Continue reading
By Jacqui Banaszynski ork as a journalist long enough, or at least start as a journalist long enough ago, and “-30-” was a standard part of your newsroom language. It was typed at the bottom of every story I sent during my early reporting days. (I liked to add a small flourish, s … | Continue reading
By Esther Wei-Yun Landhuis n spring 2020, while some FaceTimed or baked bread or pursued other pandemic hobbies, I bought an electronic drum kit. I watched YouTube to learn some basic rock beats. Before long, I was jamming to “Billie Jean,” “Don’t Stop Believing,” “Africa” and ot … | Continue reading
By Joanne Sasvari wo years ago, my husband and I fulfilled a longtime dream when we bought a small fixer-upper in the lovely city of Victoria, British Columbia. It’s not a particularly handsome house — just a boxy 1940s cottage. But I was smitten with it, especially the kitchen w … | Continue reading
By Jacqui Banaszynski riends and former colleagues from the Upper Midwest have had grand fun in the last few weeks watching a Minnesota vibe infect national politics. Mountain Editor sends frequent links to stories about Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz, the govern … | Continue reading
By Mallary Tenore Tarpley s a first-time author, I’ve spent the past four years writing and reporting my debut nonfiction book, “SLIP: Life in the Middle of Eating Disorder Recovery.” It’s been such a long labor of love that some acquaintances have asked: “Wait, is this your seco … | Continue reading
By Jacqui Banaszynski y radio options are minimal on long stretches of the drive from my city house to the mountain cabin. When I lose a signal altogether, I lean into the silence — no interest in a Sirius subscription or podcasts via my phone. It’s rare time to just think or, be … | Continue reading
EDITOR’S NOTE: Christian Lupsa attended a Taylor Swift concert Aug. 3, 2024, in Warsaw Poland. He wrote about the experience as part of his weekly “Draft Four” Substack essay. It is republished, lightly edited, with permission. By Cristian Lupsa e’re entering late-summer melancho … | Continue reading
By Mallary Tenore Tarpley eattle Times intern Xavier Martinez grew up mountain biking on the eastern slopes of Washington’s Cascades mountain range and remembers being “terrified” of encountering a cougar. Though he knew cougar attacks were rare, he rode with an awareness of the … | Continue reading
By Jacqui Banaszynski y garage-cleaning project continues to be a tomorrow thing. To ease my guilt a bit, I am tapping a sure-fire procrastinator’s trick: Do some other thing that sort of needs to be done while you’re avoiding that thing that really needs to be done. Fifty years … | Continue reading
By Jacqui Banaszynski didn’t know the woman honored in an essay in the Phoenix Spirit, a Minnesota-based publication focused on emotional and spiritual health. Even after reading it, I only knew her first name, Eileen, that she was a professor and gardener and walker, that she ex … | Continue reading
By Kim Cross don’t go to church, but I am a religious reader of The Sunday Long Read, which arrives in my inbox each Sunday like a menu of the week’s best long-form stories. I peruse the choices — curated by narrative connoisseurs — and read the ones that I hope will move me and … | Continue reading
By Jacqui Banaszynski recent post I wrote prompted a response that merits its own response. The first is a thank-you to the writer. Whether feedback is a smooch or a spanking, I’ve been in the biz long enough to welcome it. It means someone out there is reading. (You can tell whe … | Continue reading
By Trevor Pyle or almost a year, George Packer — a writer for The Atlantic and winner of the National Book Award — told people he was working on a long-form story about Phoenix, Arizona. The response he got didn’t inspire the kind of confidence journalists seek. “If I were too su … | Continue reading
often ask the journalists I work with who they write for. A more productive way of framing that question is to ask who they envision as the audience for their essay or magazine story or book. Who do they most want to reach, and why? Is it their sources? The publication they are w … | Continue reading
EDITOR’S NOTE: The final post in our series on narrative interviewing explores how a reporter focuses in on the cinematic details that create compelling scenes. Previous posts outlined the difference between reporting for news and for narrative, the pre-interviewing needed to fin … | Continue reading
EDITOR’S NOTE: The fourth post in our series on narrative interviewing describes how a reporter begins to zoom in to explore defining moments and plot points in a character’s story. Previous posts outlined the difference between reporting for news and for narrative, the pre-inter … | Continue reading
EDITOR’S NOTE: In the third installment of our series on interviewing, narrative journalist Kim Cross describes how to find and follow the arc of a story and the central tension or conflict that drives it forward. Previous posts outlined the difference between reporting for news … | Continue reading
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the second post in our five-part series on the art of the interview from narrative journalist and teacher Kim Cross. In the opening piece, Cross notes the need for an interviewing approach that is different than that she learned about straightforward news r … | Continue reading
By Kim Cross nterviewing for narrative is like hunting for something in a pitch-black warehouse with nothing more than a flashlight. It’s a good flashlight — with a head you can twist to change the shape and range of the beam. Even so, finding what you’re looking for takes time a … | Continue reading
By Carly Stern ANNOTATION: Storyboard’s questions are in red; Zayas’ answers in blue. To read the story without annotations, click the HIDE ANNOTATION button in the right-hand menu of your monitor or at the top of your mobile screen. Veterans Without Assistance Investigating Ment … | Continue reading
By Carly Stern lexandra Zayas caught the journalism bug as a kid growing up in Miami, Florida, following some of big news events of the time. From there, journalism school, several years reporting at the Tampa Bay Times and a brief move into editing before national news organizat … | Continue reading
EDITOR’S NOTE: For other posts in the occasional series about effective editing, read our interviews with Mike Wilson of The New York Times, Scott Stossel of The Atlantic and Lynda Robinson of The Washington Post. This interview, with Alexandra Zayas of ProPublica, is followed by … | Continue reading
By Jacqui Banaszynski hat political hangover I mentioned several days ago, as I braced for the first (and maybe last) presidential debate of this fraught election season, has turned into a full-blown intellectual headache. It was especially interesting to follow the cascade of ne … | Continue reading
By Jacqui Banaszynski his past weekend, I attended a “golden era” reunion of newsroom staffers from the Register-Guard in Eugene, Oregon. Fourteen hours of driving, much of it in gridlock freeway traffic, for four hours of catch-up with people I worked with 45 years ago. I don’t … | Continue reading
By Ania Hull avid Wolf has been editor of the Long Read since the UK-based Guardian launched the section 10 years ago. The Long Read world sounds like a dream for those of us who love longform stories, and Wolf the kind of editor we want to write for. For him, of course, the job … | Continue reading
By Chip Scanlan egend has it that Tom Wolfe, the New Journalism pioneer whose stories regularly presented his characters’ points of view, was once challenged by a critic who demanded to know how he could possibly know what those characters were thinking. Wolfe had a simple answer … | Continue reading
By Chip Scanlan egend has it that Tom Wolfe, the New Journalism pioneer whose stories regularly presented his characters’ points of view, was once challenged by a critic who demanded to know how he could possibly know what those characters were thinking. Wolfe had a simple answer … | Continue reading
By Jacqui Banaszynski he email arrived almost two weeks ago. I’m embarrassed to say I haven’t yet found a good response. It was sent by a talented young freelancer I met in one of my writing workshops. We keep in touch as we can — occasionally exchange life updates with others fr … | Continue reading
By Ania Hull wiss journalist Andreas Babst roams South Asia and the Middle east as a correspondent for the German-language Swiss daily Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ). He lives in India, and when time allows, works on his favorite side projects: feature stories. One of these stories, … | Continue reading
By Laurie Hertzel n a few days I am going to start hauling books from the front hallway out into the front yard for a giant give-away. Neighbors will come, and friends, and folks I don’t know, and I hope everyone finds something they like and all the books find new homes. How man … | Continue reading