Perhaps as much as any modern journalist, Michael Brick brought the style of Ben Hecht’s “A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago” into the 21st century newsroom. Hecht made the ordinary outstanding, “journalism that invaded the realm of … Read more
Back in 1998, magazine writer Mike Sager was best known for his fearless profiles of drug dealers, crackheads, porn stars, and neo-Nazis. But that year Esquire handed him a very different kind of assignment: Write about … Read more
I knew it was going to be a great class the second week of the semester, when Mike Sager told my 11 undergraduate journalism majors about the time he snorted coke with a pimp who lived on his block … Read more
This year marked some major changes at Storyboard: new website, new editor and new narrative territory. Our most popular posts of 2014 reflect some timely– and timeless– themes. Most notable is the flourishing passion for audio storytelling. No fewer than … Read more
I’ve been thinking about Mike Sager’s story, “The Devil and John Holmes,” for a long time. I first read his chronicle of the famous porn star and the Wonderland murders when it came out in 1989; I was 10 … Read more
For this weekend’s selections, Storyboard recommends reading about writing; we’re highlighting some recent articles that feature advice from authors whose worlds range from horror to science to journalism. Harvard cognitive scientist, psychologist and dictionary boss Steven Pinker — he’s … Read more
Welcome to the second session of our discussion with narrative instructors about the stories they’re assigning students this fall. If you missed Monday’s recommendations from Alex Kotlowitz, Doug Foster and Kelley Benham French, you can … Read more
Last week, a student asked for notable examples of the write-around, that subgenre in which the journalist had limited to no access with the story subject. The most famous examples are Gay Talese’s “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold” … Read more
If only we could start an international narrative-journalism conference crawl — sort of like a pub crawl, but with pencils and notebooks — here’s how we’d map out the year: “Power of Narrative: Staying Savvy, Skilled and Solvent in Journalism’s Wired … Read more
Editor’s note: A few weeks ago, Romania’s Decât o Revistă magazine attracted a crowd of writers, editors, photographers and designers to its third annual “Power of Storytelling” conference, in Bucharest. The conference, under the leadership of Cristian Lupsa, a … Read more