An editor’s sampler: ICYMI recommendations from 2023
By Jacqui Banaszynski In a companion piece, the bots channeled you, the Storyboard readers, to identify the top posts, by pageview, in 2023. It’s a strong list, and offers stories you can learn from...
View ArticleThe power of flexible focus
By Jacqui Banaszynski One of my writing workshop wisdoms is bogarted from former colleague and longtime friend Katherine Lanpher. It first came to me when I was struggling to cobble together a...
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When a Pulitzer-winning book is banned
By Carly Stern Imagine that you’ve reached your long-held journalism dreams. You worked your way to the staff of a big masthead newspaper. Then you moved beyond the breakneck pace and tight word-count...
View ArticleWhen journalism is a defense against despair
By Jacqui Banaszynski Most of my holiday cards to people as 2023 ended came to a close were signed with this wish: Here’s to a hopeful 2024. Five days in, that hopefulness was been mightily challenged....
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David Grann Part 1: A deep-dive to discover and surface “The Wager”
By Katia Savchuk Seven years ago, David Grann found himself staring at a faded journal in a digital archive. It belonged to John Byron, grandfather of the poet Lord Byron, and documented his journey as...
View ArticleDavid Grann Part 2: Craft wisdom and breaking into narrative nonfiction
By Katia Savchuk David Grann believes that scouting an idea for a book or magazine article should be more than an intellectual exercise. The right story, he says, “gets its hooks into you.” The tales...
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How a business reporter approached a story about sex-content influencers
By Trevor Pyle The world of online influencers — especially those who trade in sexual content — is an economic behemoth that’s often-murky and often-mocked. But Washington Post reporter Drew Harwell...
View ArticleA hockey lover writes a perfect “deke”
By Jacqui Banaszynski There is a standard play in ice hockey known as a “deke.” I don’t usually link to Wikipedia as a primary source, but in this case it will service just fine. According to the...
View ArticleJournalism as a practice of wonder
By Jacqui Banaszynski A bit of awe and wonder came my way last week from a riff on awe and wonder from the Los Angeles Times morning newsletter. I subscribe to the L.A. Times, which I have followed...
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How an arts reporter unraveled a controversial and opaque family art dynasty
By Chip Scanlan Every beat has its own allure. The dramatic stories of crime, criminals and their victims draw reporters to the cops beat. The best science journalists revel in data, discoveries,...
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Writing in bursts of freedom
By Sophia Chen Last autumn I traveled with two friends, Monique and Jacob, to a cabin in the western mountains of Maine. We called it a writing retreat. Monique brought books on craft; I carried around...
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RIP Jon Franklin: Inspirational writer, teacher and advocate of true stories
By Anne Saker Jon Franklin, winner of two Pulitzer Prizes and an author and teacher who fomented the late-20th century revolution of literary journalism in American newspapers, died Jan. 21 in...
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What and how I learned from Jon Franklin
By Jacqui Banaszynski One way I suss out my interest in a book is to read the blurbs from book reviewers and other writers. I note what people say about a book to determine if it suits my reading mood...
View ArticleKim Cross wins Truman Capote nonfiction award
By Jacqui Banaszynski We received a lot of thumbs-up in response to the two-part post (November 2023) featuring nonfiction author Kim Cross. Our pieces featured an interview with Cross about how she...
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A reporting team trekked back 50 years to explore an unsolved climbing mystery
By Chip Scanlan The best storytellers are driven by an insatiable need to know. Give them a mystery and they will dedicate themselves to trying to solve it. That relentless inquisitiveness propelled...
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Analytics aren’t the only measure
By Laurie Hertzel It had been seven months since I’d retired from the Minneapolis Star Tribune after nearly 50 years in journalism, and, like retired people everywhere, I realized it was time to clean...
View ArticleStory treats from cookie jars
By Jacqui Banaszynski Four long-time friends stopped for a lunch at an old-style diner in the rural ex-urbs of Philadelphia. We hadn’t all been together since before COVID and were fully absorbed with...
View ArticleTwo journalists talk to the bots — who talk back — about the pros and...
By Chip Scanlan and Casey Frechette Nieman Storyboard contributor Chip Scanlan and Casey Frechette worked together for more than a decade at The Poynter Institute where they created online courses in...
View ArticleConfessions of a flawed proofreader
By Jacqui Banaszynski Rotten Tomatoes didn’t think much of “The Da Vinci Code,” the 2006 film adapted from Dan Brown’s best-selling novel of the same name. The movie only rated 25 percent on the...
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A first-time war correspondent finds human stories in a devastated Ukraine
By Kim Crossƒ Lizzie Johnson was a young reporter at the San Francisco Chronicle in 2018, covering local and state politics, when the deadliest wildfires in California swept through the region, all but...
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