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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. “I’ve always been upfront about my identity and background, and it’s shaped who I am and the lens through...
View Article“There was a kind of autumnal stain in the air that reminded me of the smell...
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...
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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. “I think that every story works best when the writer is something of an insider-outsider and then...
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The power of immersion journalism — for a year, or the moment we’re living in...
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...
View ArticleVice News correspondent Elle Reeve and “Charlottesville: Race and Terror”
The 22-minute “Vice News Tonight” documentary “Charlottesville: Race and Terror” provided a chilling look at the white supremacists behind the violent “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Va.,...
View Article“Along with these tots and second-honeymooners, there were Harvard freshmen,...
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...
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Nikole Hannah-Jones on reporting about racial inequality: “What drives me is...
New York Times Magazine writer Nikole Hannah-Jones doesn’t pretend to be an objective observer of her subject: racial segregation. “Our job as storytellers – if we want to get people to care about...
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Reporting on racism in America: One writer confronted with rage, another...
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...
View Article“Then away out in the woods I heard that kind of a sound that a ghost makes...
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...
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This American Afterlife: Aaron Mahnke and the spooky podcast (and TV show)...
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...
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The Joan Didion documentary: a nephew’s loving portrait of “a cool customer”
In her memoir about the death of her husband, John Gregory Dunne, Joan Didion writes about the night she lost the man who can only be described as her other half. She recalls how a social worker...
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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...
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5(ish) Questions: Patsy Sims and “The Stories We Tell: Classic True Tales by...
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...
View Article“Taught from their infancy that beauty is woman’s sceptre, the mind shapes...
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”...
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5(ish) Questions: Holly Gleason and “Woman Walk the Line: How the Women of...
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 changed my life back when I...
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“Won’t it be a fine day when anthology specifically focused on women...
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...
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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? The Pitch In a...
View Article“Before the aurora borealis appears, the sensitive needles of compasses all...
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 makes an entrance. The aurora borealis, better known as the...
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Reporter Tom French and “the three most beautiful words in the English...
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...
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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...
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