If you haven’t already seen Justin Ellis’s Nieman Lab piece on WBUR’s plans for the Whitey Bulger trial, have a look at today’s news: The Boston NPR station is partnering with The Atavist to provide immersive storytelling via … Read more
Welcome, new readers! Our audience has grown considerably lately, so we thought this might be a good time to recap Storyboard’s goods and services, and to invite you to follow us on Twitter, Pinterest and Facebook. We’re a Nieman … Read more
The haunted “third of June” cannot pass without calling out Tommy Tomlinson‘s classic piece on the essence of story, via Bobbie Gentry’s “Ode to Billie Joe.” Tomlinson, a onetime Pulitzer finalist who now writes for Sports … Read more
In good fiction, the reader absorbing a compelling narrative never notices the writer as intermediary. In nonfiction, that translator’s presence is inevitable. Since the former is the ideal relationship with the reader, the more you can bring that non-point of view to nonfiction narrative, the better. In other words, as a writer, no matter what the hell you’re writing, do your best to kill your ego, even if those are mutually exclusive ideals. (i.e.: He could have told the story of the effect of that atomic bomb on an innocent city by telling us what he found when he went over there, and it would have been a good piece. Instead he gave the story over to the six survivors, and it earned a place in immortality.) Read more
Join Nieman Storyboard on Pinterest! We’re expanding our reach via categories on everything from reporting resources to tip sheets. Among our growing number of boards: … Read more
I spoke to the Public Relations Society of America’s Charlotte chapter on Wednesday, May 22, 2013. They’re a good group. Sometimes I speak off the top of my head at this sort of thing, but this time … Read more
The news out of Moore, Okla., couldn’t help remind us of the historic tornado in Joplin, Mo., and of one narrative in particular: Luke Dittrich’s National Magazine Award-winning Esquire piece on how a group of strangers survived by crowding into … Read more
When Amy Wallace profiled then-Variety editor Peter Bart for Los Angeles magazine, she took on issues of access, personality, misdirection, industry politics, journalism and retaliation. To write about a guy who’s been called “the most hated … Read more
Our “Work the problem” series continues with a psychological situation that every writer faces: How do you make peace with stories you wish you’d done differently? Fielding this one is Esquire legend Tom Junod, … Read more
Our latest Notable Narrative: “The Prophets of Oak Ridge,” Dan Zak’s 9,448-word Washington Post project—and, as of this morning, e-book—about a house painter, a drifter and an 82-year-old nun who breached the perimeter at … Read more