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Adventures in storytelling, from old-school noir to new-school memoir
Just in time for the weekend, here’s a little list of some of the things I’ve been listening to and reading this week, some of it online — Storyboard included, natch — and some of it on vinyl or actual...
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5(ish) Questions: Bill Sanderson and the JFK assassination “Bulletins from...
In this time of political shockers, it seems a good time to revisit the biggest political shocker of the American 20th century: the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Today is the 53rd...
View Article5 Questions: Pop-Up Magazine’s Doug McGray and the pleasures of live...
In today’s age of distraction, reading an entire longform story in one sitting — never mind an entire magazine —seems like a lost art. Emails, text messages, Facebook notifications and all those open...
View ArticleWhy’s This So Good: Fidel Castro and the art of the obit
Anyone who’s worked in the obituary or foreign news section of a news outlet has a story or two to tell about the Fidel Castro obituary, otherwise known as Bane of Existence. The endless updating and...
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Two top New York Times editors talk about the yearlong project “Murder in the...
When I worked at the Los Angeles Times, one of the things that made me the proudest of the newspaper was its commitment to covering every killing in L.A. County with its Homicide Report. In the face of...
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BuzzFeed News’ Albert Samaha and a modern-day lynching in Mississippi
At a time of intense racial tensions in the United States – tensions that visited my own college campus last year – I ran across a story that stopped me in my tracks. In “This Is What They Did for...
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The theme of the week is death, so it’s time to listen to a little Al Green...
Just in time for the weekend, here’s a little list of some of the things I’ve been listening to and reading this week, some of it online — Storyboard included, natch — and some of it on vinyl or actual...
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Annotation Tuesday! Rachel Monroe and “Have You Ever Thought About Killing...
Rachel Monroe has two journalistic obsessions: crime and utopia. She’s fascinated by how people deal with extreme situations, when the stakes are high and things fall apart. The two aren’t even so...
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Why’s This So Good? Mark Seal and “The Man in the Rockefeller Suit”
Clark Rockefeller doesn’t exist. The pressed Lacoste shirts and fancy shoes might be his, but the name, the title and everything else are fake. In a Vanity Fair piece that reads like fiction, Mark Seal...
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“The Age of Innocence” versus the age of innocence lost
Just in time for the weekend, here’s a little list of some of the things I’ve been listening to and reading this week, some of it online — Storyboard included, natch — and some of it on vinyl or actual...
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5(ish) Questions: Peter Frick-Wright and “What Happened to Eastern Airlines...
Thirty years ago, a plane took off in Paraguay and smashed into a mountain in Bolivia. In the decades since, the accident left secrets trapped – and conspiracy theories festering – at the frozen...
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Now might be a good time to reread a few great stories about Putin, don’t you...
With high-profile stories in The Washington Post and The New York Times reporting that Russia tampered with the U.S. presidential election and Twitter ablaze with references to “The Manchurian...
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5 Questions: Nathaniel Rich and “The Invisible Catastrophe”
For four months last winter, methane gas spewed silently and stealthily in a monumental leak from a natural gas storage facility into an affluent Southern California neighborhood. When it finally...
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A week of the invisible made visible: the Russian hack of the U.S. election,...
Just in time for the weekend, here’s a little list of some of the things I’ve been listening to and reading this week, some of it online — Storyboard included, natch — and some of it on vinyl or actual...
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The Washington Post crosses a storytelling frontier with “A New Age of Walls”
In our Brave New Distributed World, journalists suffer from a disorienting lack of control. Lack of control over audiences, over time spent on page, over clicks… the list goes on. The most any digital...
View ArticleCovering the last days of Aleppo: Even from afar, the heart breaks
The tears began streaming down my face when I woke up to the voice message from Mohammad Abu Rajab, a doctor in the besieged districts of east Aleppo. A couple of days before, his words to me had come...
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“The Lives They Lived” in The New York Times, and the lives they lost in Aleppo
Just in time for the weekend, here’s a little list of some of the things I’ve been listening to and reading this week, some of it online — Storyboard included, natch — and some of it on vinyl or actual...
View ArticleAnnotation Tuesday! Jessica Weisberg and The Atavist’s “A Family Matter”
Jessica Weisberg believes that narrative journalism is heading toward a post-platform world where reporters pick the right medium for each story. If that’s the case, she’s been training for the role of...
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Why’s This So Good? Thomas Curwen and “The Loneliest War”
We’ve become too familiar, sadly, with the narrative of destructive PTSD as troops return from Afghanistan and Iraq. But in the hands of Los Angeles Times writer Thomas Curwen, we find a quieter but no...
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Families on the edge: in print, online, on the screen
Just in time for the weekend, here’s a little list of some of the things I’ve been listening to and reading this week, some of it online — Storyboard included, natch — and some of it on vinyl or actual...
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