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Embedding with EMTs to write about the first line of COVID first responders
Harried doctors and nurses, gowned in eerie layers, race to the call of codes. Hospital hallways overflow with the near-dead. Undertakers scramble to make space as body after body arrives, and...
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“…silence so dense it became its own sound.”
If you have read the novels of Dennis Lehane (among them “Gone, Baby, Gone,” “Mystic River” and “Shutter Island,” all made into movies), you know that place is a powerful character, even a protagonist,...
View ArticleHow lessons from past stories can inform future stories
My morning NPR ritual recently brought back two major landmarks in my journalism career this past week. May 18 was both the 41st anniversary of the eruption of Mount St. Helens and the 40th anniversary...
View Article#5 rule of pitching: Make it sparkle
Of what we’ve unscientifically defined as the seven fatal flaws of story pitches, this one probably seems the most lame. Of course, your idea is interesting; you wouldn’t be pitching it if it weren’t....
View ArticleHow Memorial Day memories become today’s stories
The Memorial Day weekend caught me by surprise. After 16 months of no travel, and a schedule dictated only by this weekly newsletter, I lost the daily rhythm of showing up somewhere for work, and the...
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A radio producer and print reporters partner on a narrative for multiple...
EDITOR’S NOTE: Read an annotation of the prologue and first act of This American Life’s “Anatomy of Doubt.” CAUTION: The stories linked to and discussed in this package describe details of sexual...
View ArticleHow a story originally reported for print was transformed for audio
EDITOR’S NOTE: Read our conversation with Robyn Semien of This American Life and Ken Armstrong, formerly of The Marshall Project, on how those two organizations and ProPublica partnered to tell this...
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“I spent my career writing hard news. That’s me.”
If you’re not a fan of “A River Runs Through It,” it can only be because you haven’t read it yet. Norman Maclean’s 1976 novella of family dynamics plays out on Montana’s Blackfoot River and is an...
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Sage writing advice from the editor of Column One
“If you know what you want to say, you’ll figure out how to say it.” That’s what Steve Padilla, editor of Column One at the Los Angeles Times, told a virtual gathering of the San Diego Press Club on...
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Empathy as the prime directive in writing about displaced people
We are living in a century of displacement, says Jessica Goudeau, award-winning author of “After the Last Border: Two Families and the Story of Refuge in America.” And because we are, journalists need...
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A profile of a film-score composer that soars like his music
Nicholas Britell’s music has infused a lot of film and TV shows recently, from the rich aural landscape of HBO’s “The Underground Railroad” to the unexpected banger that is the “Succession” theme. So...
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How the voices of five young women from remote, coastal Maine challenge...
Gigi Georges is a self-described city kid. She is a long-time policy advocate and advisor who was born and raised in Brooklyn and spent most of her life moving between cities in the northeast working...
View ArticleAn early portrait of gender transition with no style guides to steer by
EDITOR’S NOTE: This week, in honor of Pride Month, we feature three posts about transgender issues. Today, see how Lane DeGregory of the Tampa Bay Times handled a profile in 2002, when there were few...
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A profile gives voice to a transgender teen who is denied her full identity
EDITOR’S NOTE: This week, in recognition of Pride Month, we feature three posts about coverage of transgender people or issues. See how Lane DeGregory of the Tampa Bay Times handled a profile in 2002,...
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What journalists need to know when interviewing a transgender person
EDITOR’S NOTE: This week, in honor of Pride Month, we feature three posts about transgender issues. Read how Lane DeGregory of the Tampa Bay Times handled a profile in 2002, when there were few other...
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The journalistic dangers of binary thinking
Meet Bethany Grace Howe, above. I met her a little over 10 years ago when she came to the Missouri School of Journalism as a nontraditional graduate student. “Nontraditional” essentially meant that she...
View ArticleIndustry news that honors the craft and reflects the times
Even the most dramatic news about the journalism is seldom a surprise. Budgets are cut. Awards are given. Veterans retire or are bought out. Book contracts are signed. But collecting a sampling and...
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A profile of Ahmaud Arbery reveals the dangers of “running while Black”
Mitchell S. Jackson was worried. It was May 2020, and he had just sent his agent the prologue of his latest novel. Jackson, a contributing writer for Esquire and author of two celebrated books, said to...
View Article#6 rule of pitching: Stay focused
Forgive the movie reference, especially if you long ago ditched the Mel Gibson fan club. But a moment early in “The Patriot” offers apt wisdom when struggling with a story pitch. The short version:...
View Article“… and the cold came biting …”
Some years ago, I spent three weeks at a mountain-climbing base camp in the interior of Antarctica. The reporting trip was supposed to be a two-day in-and-out, but a dispute over airplane fuel kept a...
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