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A profile of one place that echoes all places
Some writing comes together bit by bit, a mosaic of thoughts and observations gathered over days or months or years. Slowly or suddenly, a bigger picture emerges through a confluence of details and...
View Article“… a common appreciation for truth.”
Lou Abbott and Bud Costello’s most famous comedy sketch builds off a play on punctuation. Abbott names a baseball team’s infielders, and Who’s on first. Costello hears the period as a question mark....
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Writing past politics to a “female way of approaching things” in commentary
In today’s deeply divided world – where relationships have unraveled over everything from politics to public health – Mary Schmich is a rare commodity: A columnist who can tackle the most contentious...
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A master of sports journalism tackles a new writing challenge: narrative on...
Dave Kindred never intended to take on this project. Truth is, he didn’t even think of the Facebook posts he’s been writing as a project. But last spring, the walls began to close in on him. His wife,...
View Article#3 rule of pitching: Flyspeck your copy
Clean copy — no typos, proper grammar, consistency of style, correct spelling — probably should be the first rule of effective pitching. Lapses in the so-called little things can undermine confidence...
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A profile of police victim George Floyd also explored the health toll of racism
How is it someone can gain such notoriety in death but have their life largely unknown? That’s what Robert Samuels wondered as he set out to profile George Floyd, and explore what Floyd’s death — and...
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How an editor guided coverage of racism in the life and death of George Floyd
“Are we qualified to tell this story? Can we do it justice?” are important and clarifying questions for any journalist to ask before chasing a story. But the moral urgency that drives this gut-check...
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The keys to global journalism: curiosity, open-mindedness and a broad network
As an Australian, I often feel that locally produced radio news and podcasts are too inward-looking. If the news doesn’t directly affect Australia, or have a strong link to this nation, it receives...
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How a top LinkedIn journalist quit with no what’s-next ideas, then woke up to...
Isabelle Roughol has not gone quietly into this global pandemic. Quite the opposite. Each week she produces two versions of her podcast Borderline (one in French and one in English) from her current...
View Article“He was old enough to dance to a good beat but too young to know his favorite...
A line from a 1993 story about gun violence in America has stayed with me all these years. It was by DeNeen Brown of The Washington Post, called “Getting Ready to Die Young,” and featured young Black...
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The surprising structure of a journey that inspired a surprising structure of...
It all seems fated, somehow: The two cyclists, meeting by chance in an empty stretch of the Kazakh desert, yes, but also the writer stumbling across their story years later in an Alabama bike shop....
View ArticleJournalists on the screen: a conflicted image
The TV reporter is just another TV reporter, one more mid-market face, holding a microphone, speaking in clipped vowels, an interchangeable local news personality with the kind of interchangeable local...
View ArticlePractical tools, pro survival tips and poetry led Nieman Storyboard’s top...
Below are Nieman Storyboard’s top 10 stories, in terms of pageviews and in reverse drumroll order, for 2020. Later this week we’ll include a few of our personal favorites. 10- Navigating ethics,...
View ArticleA go-to list of how-to story craft posts from 2020
One the best things about writing, or any storytelling, as a career is also one of the worst: You’re never as good as you can get. Sourcing, research, interviewing, story structure, pacing — all that...
View ArticleA very few of my favorite fiction reads of 2020
I started with the notion of trying to wade through the weeds of this past year and list the things that kept me in astonishment as a reader, writer, editor and citizen. The list of excellent...
View Article“The mountains on the horizon …“
Cal Hooper is a Chicago cop who was ditched by his wife, estranged from his daughter, haunted by past cases and addicted to the action. Somewhere along the way, the guiding line between right and wrong...
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Passports to authentic reporting: a foreign view, and a view through empathy
At the end of this, a year that defies easy summary, we abandon attempts to try. Instead, here are two bits of lagniappe that came our way and we pass along to you. We hope you find them useful,...
View ArticleThrilling journalism in face of a terrible year
A version of this essay was published as the Storyboard newsletter on Jan. 1, 2020 A flip of a calendar page and, just like that, 2020 is over. Of course, it wasn’t just like that. It wasn’t like...
View ArticleReconstructing the tragedy of COVID from the epicenter of New York City’s...
One of the most heartbreaking realities of the coronavirus pandemic is particularly harsh: Patients usually die alone, separated from their loved ones with only a cellphone or iPad to say goodbye,...
View ArticleWhy journalists rise up in the face of fear
The email that pinged my inbox Wednesday, as an assault on the U.S. Capitol was at its most intense, was quick and blunt: “Aren’t you glad you’re not out there?” I responded with similar blunt speed:...
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