EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the fourth dispatch from the 2024 Power of Narrative conference at Boston University. For previous posts, see deadline narratives by a Wall Street Journal podcast team, the braided structure used by The Atavist for complex stories and practical tips on empa … | Continue reading
EDITOR’S NOTE: This essay is a share from our friends at The Poynter Institute, with gratitude. By Roy Peter Clark ll good writers play with words, even when they write about grave matters. The device that makes such word play the most visible is the pun. My first sentence contai … | Continue reading
By Jacqui Banaszynski f walls could talk, the tales whispered through the rooms of the Foreign Correspondents’ Club in Hong Kong would hold me in thrall. The club is a throwback to another time in our profession. It welcomes you like a comfortable hug after assignments that left … | Continue reading
By Jacqui Banaszynski recent social media post from a journalist-turned-professor sparked my interest. The professor told a quick story about a student who went into an interview with trepidation (don’t we all?), and then was thrilled when the source complimented her on an especi … | Continue reading
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the third dispatch from the 2024 Power of Narrative conference at Boston University. For the others, see deadline narratives by a Wall Street Journal podcast team, and the braided structure used by The Atavist for complex stories. By Esther Landhuis s a sci … | Continue reading
By Line Vaaben uch of my shaping as a journalist traces back 25 years, when I covered a deadly fire in Sweden. But it wasn’t until I returned to the scene a quarter-century later that I realized how the original story lingers in my mind — and in my body. * * * The rocky […] | Continue reading
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the second of ourdispatches from the 2024 Power of Narrative conference at Boston University. For the first post, see deadline narratives by a Wall Street Journal podcast team. By Madeline Bodin ow can you make a story twice as rich, twice as intense and tw … | Continue reading
recent phone conversation has me thinking about construction. Not of the firewood holder waiting in the garage to be assembled (a spare Allen wrench, anyone?). I’m thinking of construction as it applies to stories. I was contacted by an admired journalist who now also teaches at … | Continue reading
By Madeline Bodin t’s a chronic problem with narrative journalism. No matter what media you work in, no matter what genre, no matter whether your deadlines are short and solid or long and adjustable — it never feels like you have enough time to produce the best story. But conside … | Continue reading
By Jacqui Banaszynski lassic news narratives tend to follow a single primary character through a story. There are other characters, of course, including people connected to the main character or more official or expert sources to provide context and perspective. Such classic narr … | Continue reading
By Jacqui Banaszynski bove are a couple of spring daffodils for you as the world passes the spring equinox, and the tilt of time once again shifts. I send them for no other reason than it’s spring and daffodils are both happy and wonderfully determined. These popped up through th … | Continue reading
By Trevor Pyle hen reporter Kavitha Surana and photographer Stacy Kranitz profiled a Tennessee mother forced to endure a life-threatening pregnancy shortly after Roe v. Wade was overturned, they could have let the story end on its bittersweet final sentence: She whispered a quiet … | Continue reading
By Chip Scanlan he best narrative writers know they need not just to interview after the fact, but to observe in the moment. They want to be on the scene, where they see characters and action unfold in real place and real time, providing a less-filtered view of complexity and hum … | Continue reading
By Jacqui Banaszynski try to take notice of writing approaches in all manner of places. As a kid, I read the back of cereal boxes, which probably were promo-style or maybe kid-type stories. I read the “Green Pages” of the Milwaukee Journal, which were a stylized features section. … | Continue reading
By Jyoti Madhoosoodanan (from a Facebook post) urrently in an email thread that is 70 messages long (and growing) — all to check the accuracy of a 3,000 word story, with a special focus on a few sentences. Those sentences are not wrong, but we’d like to be sure that people who im … | Continue reading
By Jacqui Banaszynski sign of the times… or, to be wordier but more precise, a sign of my obsessed mind in these divisive times in these dis-United States … My closest friend’s husband reads comic strips. He has done this as long as I’ve known him, which is some 45 years now. He … | Continue reading
EDITOR’S NOTE: Thomas Gibbons-Neff served with the U.S. Marines in Afghanistan; he now writes for The New York Times, covering the war in Ukraine. Karl Marlantes served with the U.S. Marines in Vietnam; he is the author of three novels, including the acclaimed Vietnam novel “Matt … | Continue reading
By Kim Cross izzie Johnson was a young reporter at the San Francisco Chronicle in 2018, covering local and state politics, when the deadliest wildfires in California swept through the region, all but destroying the small town of Paradise. Johnson raised her hand to go, soon turni … | Continue reading
By Jacqui Banaszynski otten Tomatoes didn’t think much of “The Da Vinci Code,” the 2006 film adapted from Dan Brown’s best-selling novel of the same name. The movie only rated 25 percent on the Tomatometer; the Critics Consensus called it “dull and bloated.” I can’t argue that it … | Continue reading
By Chip Scanlan and Casey Frechette ieman Storyboard contributor Chip Scanlan and Casey Frechette worked together for more than a decade at The Poynter Institute where they created online courses in reporting and writing. Casey is an associate professor and former chair of the jo … | Continue reading
By Jacqui Banaszynski our long-time friends stopped for a lunch at an old-style diner in the rural ex-urbs of Philadelphia. We hadn’t all been together since before COVID and were fully absorbed with catching up. But we were barely seated before we were distracted by the collecti … | Continue reading
By Laurie Herzel t had been seven months since I’d retired from the Minneapolis Star Tribune after nearly 50 years in journalism, and, like retired people everywhere, I realized it was time to clean out the basement. On the metal shelves in the laundry room were stacked dozens of … | Continue reading
By Chip Scanlan he best storytellers are driven by an insatiable need to know. Give them a mystery and they will dedicate themselves to trying to solve it. That relentless inquisitiveness propelled John Branch of The New York Times on a three-year odyssey to find out what happene … | Continue reading
By Jacqui Banaszynski e received a lot of thumbs-up in response to the two-part post (November 2023) featuring nonfiction author Kim Cross. Our pieces featured an interview with Cross about how she landed a contract for her book, “In Light of All Darkness,” after eight years and … | Continue reading
By Jacqui Banaszynski ne way I suss out my interest in a book is to read the blurbs from book reviewers and other writers. I note what people say about a book to determine if it suits my reading mood at the time. But I pay just as much attention to who is promoting a book, […] | Continue reading
By Anne Saker on Franklin, winner of two Pulitzer Prizes and an author and teacher who fomented the late-20th century revolution of literary journalism in American newspapers, died Jan. 21 in Annapolis, Maryland. He was 82. Franklin died at Hospice of the Chesapeake after a Jan. … | Continue reading
By Sophia Chen ast autumn I traveled with two friends, Monique and Jacob, to a cabin in the western mountains of Maine. We called it a writing retreat. Monique brought books on craft; I carried around more pens than fingers. And we did write — outdoors at a lake’s edge, and indoo … | Continue reading
By Chip Scanlan very beat has its own allure. The dramatic stories of crime, criminals and their victims draw reporters to the cops beat. The best science journalists revel in data, discoveries, evidence and the challenges of determining their veracity. For more than a decade as … | Continue reading
By Jacqui Banaszynski bit of awe and wonder came my way last week from a riff on awe and wonder from the Los Angeles Times morning newsletter. I subscribe to the L.A. Times, which I have followed since I first moved to the Pacific Northwest early in my career. It, like most news … | Continue reading
By Jacqui Banaszynski here is a standard play in ice hockey known as a “deke.” I don’t usually link to Wikipedia as a primary source, but in this case it will service just fine. According to the summary: In ice hockey, a deke is a type of feint or fake technique whereby a player … | Continue reading
By Trevor Pyle he world of online influencers — especially those who trade in sexual content — is an economic behemoth that’s often-murky and often-mocked. But Washington Post reporter Drew Harwell used his remarkable story on a pair of OnlyFans content producers to treat the sub … | Continue reading
By Katia Savchuk avid Grann believes that scouting an idea for a book or magazine article should be more than an intellectual exercise. The right story, he says, “gets its hooks into you.” The tales that grip Grann, a longtime staff writer at The New Yorker and the bestselling au … | Continue reading
By Katia Savchuk even years ago, David Grann found himself staring at a faded journal in a digital archive. It belonged to John Byron, grandfather of the poet Lord Byron, and documented his journey as a midshipman on The Wager, a British warship that set sail in 1740 on a secret … | Continue reading
By Jacqui Banaszynski ost of my holiday cards to people as 2023 ended came to a close were signed with this wish: Here’s to a hopeful 2024. Five days in, that hopefulness was been mightily challenged. A shooting at a public school in a small town in Iowa left a sixth-grader dead … | Continue reading
By Carly Stern magine that you’ve reached your long-held journalism dreams. You worked your way to the staff of a big masthead newspaper. Then you moved beyond the breakneck pace and tight word-count limits of that world to the relative luxury of long-form magazine narratives. Th … | Continue reading
By Jacqui Banaszynski ne of my writing workshop wisdoms is bogarted from former colleague and longtime friend Katherine Lanpher. It first came to me when I was struggling to cobble together a last-minute keynote for some narrative conference, and reached out to some friends for h … | Continue reading
By Jacqui Banaszynski n a companion piece, the bots channeled you, the Storyboard readers, to identify the top posts, by pageview, in 2023. It’s a strong list, and offers stories you can learn from again and again. Now I claim the editor’s prerogative with my own highlights from … | Continue reading
By Jacqui Banaszynski y vexations with the bots are many. They read my mind when I enter the first few words — or letters — of a Google search. They track my phone to the dentist’s office and then send endless ads for tooth bleach. I am convinced they cheat when I play Cribbage o … | Continue reading
By Jacqui Banaszynski am a Christmas person, without apology. I long ago left behind institutional religious practice. I no longer go big on decorations. But upbringing, culture and, mostly, the deep quite of solstice-time make it a feeling I embrace. For whatever reason, it make … | Continue reading
By Fern Reiss ’ve been both accepted and rejected by Nature Magazine. For the same submission. It all started when I met a bumblebee veterinarian at the UPOD Writer’s Conference this past January. Some people keep a bucket list. I keep a publishing bucket list. Nature had been o … | Continue reading
By Jacqui Banaszynski s I indulged in my morning obsession of scanning news headlines one day last week, I paused on something called “napkin stories.” The tease I got included a reference to actor Chris Pine — a favorite of mine — so I surrendered my click. It led to an Esquire … | Continue reading
By Jacqui Banaszynski lot of journalists dream of having their byline on work that wins one of the top industry awards. Many long to see their name on the spine of a book. Some might even fantasy about their name on a building at their alma mater before they remember that 1) they … | Continue reading
By Kim Cross s a writer of meticulously reported narratives, I geek out about process. A big part of my writing process is an evolving organizational “system” that supports the repetitive tasks that complicated writing projects entail. These tasks can feel tedious and grunty, so … | Continue reading
By Jacqui Banaszynski toryboard does not indulge in easy click bait. But I would be foolish to ignore a legitimate opportunity to tap the drawing power of Taylor Swift. There’s this week’s news that she was named Time Magazine’s Person of the Year. You can read all about how Time … | Continue reading
By Tom Warhover here’s a war on words and images out there. Book banning in schools is trending these days, supercharged with the twin engines of social media and political extremism. Banning has reached historic highs. Book challenges are local, school district by school distric … | Continue reading
By Jacqui Banaszynski he gratitude essay I wrote recentlyhas given back in multiples — which is how gratitude is supposed to work. I’ve received several lovely notes in response, including one from a non-writer who said “Hey, a list of words. I can do that!” I shouldn’t say this … | Continue reading
By Jacqui Banaszynski he primary New York Times obit of Henry Kissinger listed it as a “38 MIN READ.” I checked the clock, my to-do list and my energy level. Then I bookmarked the obit for a later read. I came into journalism just as President Richard Nixon was facing the heat of … | Continue reading
By Carly Stern s a journalist who has covered disability issues, I’ve long been interested in nuanced and in-depth narratives surrounding the vast range of experiences with disability. That includes the lived experiences of people with disabilities as well as those of the people … | Continue reading