Divining the “fantastical sea creatures” on the political horizon
By Jacqui Banaszynski You don’t need insider access, aka paid subscriber status, to the news to overindulge in speculation about the possible indictment coming down from a Manhattan grand jury against...
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2023 Power of Narrative: The investigation and birth of a personal essay
By Caren Chesler Essayist and poet Hillery Stone lost her 4-year-old dog not long ago. A door was opened. The dog ran out. Several people who tried to steer the dog run away from the road inadvertently...
View ArticleReaching for tools to summon the Muse
By Jacqui Banaszynski Consider the tease of the writer’s muse. We wait and wait and wait for her to show up, and get more anxious about her absence as deadline nears. So we thrash through something as...
View ArticleHow a 19th century widow stopped the presses — and pioneered deadline reporting
By Lauren Kessler Can the past teach us anything? Is there a reason beyond “oh, that’s interesting/ quaint/awful/who knew?” to delve into the lives of journalists who did their work before we were...
View ArticleA guide to clear writing in tangled times
By Katharine Gammon Roy Peter Clark says he never meant to write another book about writing. Clark, a senior scholar at The Poynter Institute, had already written or edited 20 books about reading,...
View Article“…just how astonishing this particular moment really is.”
By Jacqui Banaszynski Context is a core to good reporting, especially when current events are informed by history, law, geopolitics, culture, economics or the many other things that complicate modern...
View ArticleInterviewing as the star of the show
By Jacqui Banaszynski The video screens on the back of airplane seats are small and often smudged. But for many years, when I flew twice a week for work, that’s where I saw most movies. The filmophiles...
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Getting out of your head ~ and out of the way of a true story
By Dale Keiger If you write for a living and stay with it long enough you will accumulate a bulging folder of journeyman’s work. You don’t renounce it and you don’t brag about it. It’s the work that...
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John Lennon, Jimmy Breslin and (deadline) narrative as the sum of its parts
EDITOR’S NOTE: In coming weeks, narrative journalist and teacher Lauren Kessler will identify and explore the key elements of nonfiction storytelling, including scene, character and dialog. By Lauren...
View ArticleRuts on the road of a writing career
By Jacqui Banaszynski Do anything often enough and long enough and you probably, at times, fall into the occasional rut. I don’t know of any fellow journalist, no matter their age or experience, who...
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An annotated guide to narrative magic
By Madeline Bodin After reading a remarkable work of nonfiction, have you ever wished you could learn exactly how the writer created what you just read? I don’t think I’m alone in being intrigued by...
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What’s in a name? When it comes to podcasting, it can be confusing
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the table-setter to a series of posts in the coming week that reprise the earlier Storyboard series “Audio Danger,” which include interviews with top narrative podcasters on...
View ArticleReady, fire, aim! aka type, send, think!
By Jacqui Banaszynski A reminder about caution on the keyboard was inspired by last week’s news of the arrest of the Air National Guardsman accused of leaking Pentagon documents that contained...
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A new best-of collection of audio storytelling honors narrative podcasting
EDITOR’S NOTE: A revival of the Storyboard series “Audio Danger” updates the craft of narrative podcasts and introduces a new best-of collection. This introductory post will be followed by four posts...
View ArticleReporting and writing scenes: The foundational building block of stories
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the second post in our focused series on the core elements of narrative by narrative journalist and teacher Lauren Kessler. Future posts will explore the development of character...
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Six profiles and a first-person approach give dignity to the many faces of...
By Trevor Pyle In opening paragraphs of her Chicago Reader piece about six deaths in Chicago last year, Katie Prout makes a rare and daring admission: She reveals that she keeps an altar and remakes it...
View ArticleWhat happens to the investigators who see what the rest of us don’t — or won’t?
By Jacqui Banaszynski One of the tragic realities and outrages of life in America has become the steady drumbeat of gun deaths. The news takes on a Gatling-gun pace — and that reference is intentional....
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A podcaster follows a then-cop into the breach of the U.S. Capitol
EDITOR’S NOTE: This month, Pushkin Industries published “The Best Audio Storytelling: 2022,” an audiobook compendium of English-language nonfiction. The collection’s curator, Pushkin’s Julia Barton...
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2023 Power of Narrative: Prepping for profiles
By Madeline Bodin Profiles are the bread and butter of nearly every feature writer at nearly every type of publication, from trade magazines, to national newspapers, to the glossiest of newsstand...
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