By Jacqui Banaszynski At the many writing workshops I lead, the primary struggles reporters raise involve, duh, writing. But when six health-reporting fellows gathered recently, the challenges they brought to the fore centered around reporting. And these were not … Read more
By Carly Stern Every reporter has one of those story ideas simmering on the back burner that they simply can’t let drop. For Raquel Rutledge, it started with a house fire. The fire, which damaged a two-story rental house … Read more
By Chip Scanlan When one journalist falls, others rise to take up their cause. That’s the animating principle behind a long history of journalists completing untold stories left behind by murdered or jailed reporters. Such memorial work gained attention … Read more
By Trevor Pyle To guide readers through a thicket of bureaucracy and a shocking policy that had been born there, Caitlin Dickerson first had to slash through it herself. Once she had, the reporter for The Atlantic had unwound … Read more
Reporters are always hunting for timely news pegs to resurface evergreen stories. More than a year after Jennifer Gollan’s arresting investigation into labor abuses against caregivers, coronavirus has offered a sobering hook: the pandemic that has wreaked havoc on … Read more
Journalism that explores “true crime” is booming, in everything from investigative stories to books to gripping TV documentaries. But it can easily risk being exploitative. That cautionary note comes from Pamela Colloff, whose justice … Read more
At first glance, it might seem an unlikely story from a veteran investigative reporter. But it was those investigative instincts and skills that James Eli Shiffer used to report and write the sweet, sad life story of Janet … Read more
Before humans learned to write, they documented their lives through images with technologies fashioned from materials at hand. To create the renowned galleries of animals — objects of fascination, dreams of conquest — in the Lascaux Cave, painted … Read more
EDITOR’S NOTE: While we did not annotate this project by ProPublica Illinois, we are including it in “Annotation Tuesday” because the story itself, as published, was an innovative example of annotated journalism. Effective reporters prize public records — documents … Read more