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A documentary film breaks rules and wins an Oscar
EDITOR’S NOTE: All time codes in this post correspond to the YouTube version of “The Queen of Basketball.” It’s also available, with an introduction by filmmaker Ben Proudfoot, on The New York Times...
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Eternal pain, intractable politics and public detachment
How much difference does three days make? Too much, at least when it comes to our gnat-like attention span. Three days is the time it takes for the public to shift from outrage to resignation in...
View ArticleA writer’s tribute to Roger Angell: For the love of the reading journey
For all my life, I’ve been a baseball agnostic. The thing I like most about baseball is that, by and large, it is played outside in the summertime, generally in the cool of the evening. Johnny Sain,...
View ArticleWhen gun violence visits: Previous work to guide your stories
After 19 students and two teachers were gunned down in a classroom in Uvalde, Texas, the chorus rose: “Enough!” It came with a sad refrain: “It will happen again.” And it did. As many as 15 mass...
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A reporter explores the laws and emotion involved in helping her father die
By March 2020, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), the incurable illness also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, had already ravaged Ron Deprez’s once-strong body with particular cruelty. He needed help...
View ArticleWhat to do when words fail you
Sometimes the words just don’t work. I don’t mean they don’t come together easily or work well or string together in pretty rhythms. Those are annoyances we seldom get to indulge in deadline...
View ArticleA viral image, a question of provenance and a consideration of truth
In the 100-plus days since Vladimir Putin ordered his Russian army into Ukraine, I have done something I rarely do on social media: Forwarded shares, many days a week, of art from and about Ukraine....
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“I’m-not-a-journalist” newspaper columnist writes about community, parenting...
Conclusion based on anecdotal evidence: Anyone who writes a regular column for a newspaper or magazine works harder than you know. Corollary: Community newspaper columnists, who usually can’t tap...
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A science writer with comedic timing profiles an alligator with star power
Great story ideas are everywhere, and Corinne Purtill spotted a gem on a family trip to the Los Angeles Zoo, where she learned the story of a celebrity with a checkered past. Purtill had just joined...
View ArticleThe vital scramble after news that will reverberate forward
Just when I think the dominant news of the day is too big to be pushed aside, it is eclipsed by other news. I was working through an early draft of the newsletter last Friday morning (June 24, 2002)...
View Article“… the Jenga tower simply will not collapse.”
In the minority writing of last month’s Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade, three justices delivered a dissent that was both lacerating rebuke and baleful elegy. Folded unexpectedy inside:...
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A podcast focused on diversity practices what it preaches
When I asked Saadia Khan whether or not she identifies as a journalist, she said no. Her definition of a journalist: “someone with a degree in journalism or has worked in the field.” Without those...
View ArticleStruggling to explain American democracy to a visitor
With something of a literary apology to Garrison Keillor … It was anything but a quiet week in Lake Woebegone, aka These dis-United States, as we headed into the nation’s 246th birthday. Rulings from...
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So you want to write a book? The risks and rewards of memoir
For well over a decade, my memoir was a perennial backburner project. I would vow to carve out time to write each week, but work or life always took precedence. I kept a blog where I posted personal...
View ArticleA meteorologist attracts an audience with casual writing and controversial views
If not for the astrophysicist and author Carl Sagan, University of Washington atmospheric scientist Cliff Mass might be writing and teaching about Nor’easters, Mount Washington in New Hampshire and...
View ArticleWhen your saved story becomes one more overstuffed space
One of the few things I appreciate about Facebook, besides tours of my friends’ faraway lives and photos of the babies being born to my former “Baby Js”, is the SAVE feature. It’s also, for me, one of...
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So you want to write a book? Brace yourself for some serious self-promotion...
It was the mid-1990s. I was sitting across a white damask table-clothed table at a midtown Manhattan steak house watching my editor, Bob Loomis, alternately cut into a ribeye and sip a dry Martini....
View ArticleA tribute to the consummate reporter/writer: Francis X. Clines
EDITOR’S NOTE: This tribute is shared with permission from our friends at The Poynter Institute. Frank Clines arrived at The New York Times in 1958, one year before the death of that most brilliant...
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Raise your glasses to four lessons all writers can learn by judging craft beer
Maybe not 99, but at least a few dozen bottles of beer are along the wall. We take one down, pass it around, make sure the barcode on the bottle matches the form on our computer screens, and pry open...
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Francis X. Clines: The consummate newspaper journalist
Every afternoon when I was a kid, the Green Bay (Wisconsin) Press Gazette landed in the driveway of our house. Actually, squinting back, I think it got tucked between the storm door and screen door....
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