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Tracking shards of grief for 20 years, and daring to love your story subjects
Stories about grief can shape themselves into as many forms as grief itself. And when grief is multiplied by several people and 20 years, it splinters and reforms again and again. After the Sept. 11...
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An editor annotates her own column from 20 years ago about Sept. 11
On Saturday, the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, I was listening to coverage on NPR and wonder whether there was anything meaningful I could say on social media. Mindful of a...
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Reporting through privacy and pain to expose the scandal of Black amputations
When ProPublica health policy reporter Lizzie Presser tackles a new national story, she follows the dictum of essayist E.B. White: “Don’t write about Man; write about a man.” So when she and her...
View ArticleHow listening to foreign languages can enrich your writing
It was while listening to a Tamil story on Spotify that the thought occurred to me: Listening to stories in vernacular Indian languages had changed my writing. Some of the influence came from the...
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The New Yorker explores a dilemma in Ultra-Orthodox divorce: What about the...
Before she penned a nearly 9,000-word feature about the choices that parents navigate when leaving Orthodox Judaism behind, Larissa MacFarquhar hadn’t covered this particular community. A...
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Jim Sheeler turned the simple obituary into a high and reverent art
A brief anecdote in a Denver Post story about Pulitzer Prize winner Jim Sheeler describes how a new reporter was seated next to him in the newsroom of the Rocky Mountain News. When he introduced...
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Plain-spoken words about the “7 stages of severe COVID death” go viral
In late August, the Los Angeles Times published an unvarnished description of illness and death from COVID-19, written by a respiratory therapist who has worked on the front lines of the pandemic:...
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How a top explanatory reporter does emotional interviews: With empathy
Science journalist Ed Yong of The Atlantic has earned the reputation as one of, if not the, top chroniclers of the COVID-19 pandemic. He won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting with a...
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Lane DeGregory: Intimate access to a Florida COVID-19 ward, with conditions
As a writer who routinely embeds in her subjects’ lives, the COVID pandemic was a blow to Lane DeGregory’s reporting. She was barred from sit-down interviews, where she would normally run through a...
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Cutting through numbing numbers with electrified writing
For many Americans, COVID news has joined the thrum of everyday life. But Charles Pierce warned readers in a recent newsletter the crisis shouldn’t be allowed to be part of the wallpaper. It should...
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How to turn a theme and 900 words into sense-of-place poetry
With the summer of 2021 drawing to an end, Mike Wilson, the deputy sports editor in charge of enterprise and investigations at The New York Times, wanted to celebrate the season (it seemed COVID might...
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Jim Sheeler’s legacy to journalism: Empathy, decency and stories that last
In late August, Jim Tankersley, a White House correspondent for The New York Times, learned he was going to be the pool reporter following President Biden to Dover Air Force Base for the arrival of the...
View ArticleHow a lifestyle reporter tamed the tiger of Twitter
The behemoth of Twitter has been a game-changer for journalism. It has become a tool for breaking stories, making — or breaking — careers, calling attention to issues, and giving a platform to people...
View ArticleLiterary Forensics: How to edit (and self-edit) from the inside out
Here is a self-editing origin story: I was back from my first truly big reporting assignment, which was to cover the 1984-85 famine in the sub-Sahara. I was exhausted, emotional about what I had seen,...
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Nut grafs: Getting to the heart of the story
My assignment was to answer this question: “Do you have a method for teaching or guiding what we often call the “nut graf?” The request came from Jacqui Banaszynski, editor of Nieman Storyboard. She...
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Nut grafs (or graphs): How five sentences can help a writer focus
I love a good nut graph. After a meaty description of a scene or complex idea that pulls me into a story, my brain wants to know why I just read those paragraphs. The nut graph tells the reader which...
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Nut grafs: Learning from literature, music, movie trailers and “the bones” of...
When I’m working with writers on their nut grafs — and when I’m struggling with some version of a nut graf of my own — I seek guidance in examples where the storyteller nailed the point right away....
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Nut grafs: Seven steps to score a winning story structure
Oh, the nut graf. I had to mentally brace myself to write about it. After all these years, it’s still the hardest thing I write. I tell students that all the time. I want them to know it’s not just...
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Nut grafs: A triptych of teaching approaches
EDITOR’S NOTE: Last week and this, we’re offering support to editors and educators for how to guide writers through an effective nut graf — however you spell it and whatever you call it. See earlier...
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Nut grafs: Triptych II ~ Pointed questions, including WHOGAS?
EDITOR’S NOTE: Last week and this, we’re offering support to editors and educators for how to guide writers through an effective nut graf — however you spell it and whatever you call it. Go to the...
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