Narrative News

For film week, home movies and drive-ins (and David Foster Wallace on David Lynch)

A weekly roundup of some favorite things, for your reading and listening pleasure

By Kari Howard • September 22, 2017

Abandoned East Hartford Drive-In, South Windsor, Connecticut.

Read More

5 Questions

5(ish) Questions: Photographer Lindsay Rickert and “Drive-In America”

She spent 65 days on the road, covering 12,000 miles, in search of this fast-disappearing artifact of the country's past -- and its summer memories

By Don Bartletti • September 21, 2017

One Great Sentence

“I know all about reporters, Walter. A lot of daffy buttinskis running around without a nickel in their pockets and for what? So a million hired girls and motormen’s wives’ll know what’s going on.”

Hildy Johnson to Walter Burns, "His Girl Friday"

By Kari Howard • September 20, 2017

Featured Contributors

Steve Oney

Katia Savchuk

Julia Shipley

Jasmine Bager

Julie Schwietert Collazo

More contributors

Featured topics

Investigative Reporting Short Narratives Tom Junod Poverty Narrative Journalism
Show section navigation Hide section navigation ⨂

Notable Narratives

Notable Narrative: The Marshall Project’s Maurice Chammah and “The Accusation”

By Katia Savchuk
September 12, 2017

The reporter talks about his piece, published jointly with Esquire, on a recanted allegation of child sex abuse that had sent a father to prison

Notable Narratives

The late Alex Tizon and “My Family’s Slave”: his first memory, and his last byline

By Jacqui Banaszynski
September 5, 2017

The Atlantic story, published just weeks after his death, drew a firestorm of criticism; a Pulitzer winner and friend examines the craft, and the loss

Notable Narratives

Notable Narrative: Joe Kovac Jr. and a tale of murder, a manhunt and a midnight run

By Steve Oney
August 29, 2017

The reporter for Georgia's Macon Telegraph shows that even on regional newspapers with tiny staffs, writers can dream large with gripping narratives

Notable Narratives

Pat Beall and “Sexually abused as a child: A Post reporter’s journey to finding hope”

By Scott Gold
August 15, 2017

The Palm Beach Post investigative journalist talks about why she decided to write about her long-ago trauma -- and her struggles with first person

Notable Narratives

Notable Narrative: Nicole Lucas Haimes and “Who Killed Julian Pierce?”

By Katia Savchuk
August 3, 2017

The writer and documentary filmmaker talks about a story on a murdered Native American activist that was nearly 30 years in the making -- and became an obsession

Notable Narratives

Notable Narrative: Luke Mogelson and “The Desperate Battle to Destroy ISIS”

By Francesca Borri
July 10, 2017

The writer talks about his tour-de-force story for The New Yorker about an Iraqi SWAT team's fight to save their city -- and the price they paid to do it

Notable Narratives

Notable Narrative: Jason Fagone and “What Bullets Do to Bodies”

By Davis Harper
June 26, 2017

The writer talks about his Huffington Post Highline profile of a trauma surgeon, and wanting readers to get a “visceral sense of what physically happens inside a person when he’s shot”

Notable Narratives

Notable Narrative: Susan Dominus and “Is an Open Marriage a Happier Marriage?”

By Davis Harper
June 20, 2017

The New York Times Magazine writer talks about how her controversial story changed her views on non-monogamy -- and made her appreciate her own marriage more

Notable Narratives

The Boston Globe’s Malcolm Gay and a story of love, and art, lost to the Holocaust

By Katia Savchuk
April 25, 2017

The writer talks about reporting history in real time as he stumbles on the untold tale of a promising composer killed by the Nazis -- and the woman who has missed him for the rest of her life

Notable Narratives

Notable Narrative: Daniel Miller and the Los Angeles Times’ “Selling Stardom”

By Katia Savchuk
March 16, 2017

The show business reporter takes a walk on the seamier side of Hollywood, and meets a lot of wannabes with broken dreams (plus an agent who breaks down in front of him)

Notable Narratives

Notable Narrative: Bernt Jakob Oksnes and “The Baby in the Plastic Bag”

By Kari Howard
March 7, 2017

The Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet bucked the short-attention-span trend by committing to a nine-part serial -- and it paid off both in readers and a powerful narrative about an infant left for dead

Notable Narratives

Two top New York Times editors talk about the yearlong project “Murder in the 4-0”

By Kari Howard
November 29, 2016

With crime at historic lows in the city, the paper decided to "delve deeply into deaths, and lives, that might otherwise be ignored" in a Bronx precinct where homicides persist. A series of heartbreaking narratives is the result.

More stories