5 Questions

What’s in a 50-year-old photo? The lingering gutwrench of the Vietnam War

An iconic photo from the 1968 Tet Offensive is revisited, raising questions about memory, identity, and and how we honor those who served

By Steven A. Smith • May 23, 2019

John Olson's iconic photo of a wounded Marie, taken in mid-February 1968 during the infamous Tet Offensive, inspired books, a Newseum exhibit, news stories, and some controversy over the identify of the young American on the stretcher

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One Great Sentence

“A true war story is never moral.”

Tim O'Brien, from his novel "The Things They Carried"

By Jacqui Banaszynski • May 23, 2019

Story Craft

Roy Peter Clark on the search for the “embedded narrative”

How to find a compelling storyline in arts coverage — or any beat topic

By Roy Peter Clark • May 21, 2019

Featured Contributors

Katia Savchuk

Julia Shipley

Tom Warhover

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Featured topics

Investigative Reporting Short Narratives Tom Junod Poverty Narrative Journalism
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Narrative News

Reflections on the challenges and triumphs of masculinity in changing times

By Kari Howard
May 16, 2019

An anthology of profiles by award-winning journalist Steve Oney is out in paperback, offering lessons in an essential journalistic artform

Annotation Tuesday!

On trial for the Ghost Ship warehouse fire: Was an accused villain miscast as the bad guy?

By Katia Savchuk
May 14, 2019

For "In the Ashes of Ghost Ship," Elizabeth Weil saw beyond existing news coverage to explore a story no one else had told

Digital Storytelling

How The New York Times tracked public data to produce “Killing Khashoggi”

By Chip Scanlan
May 9, 2019

A new breed of investigative reporters are tapping into digital surveillance, open-source tools and social media to create powerful video narratives

Annotation Tuesday!

From a caress of love to a fist of fear

By Ricki Morell
May 7, 2019

The New Yorker story "A Raised Hand," by Rachel Louise Snyder, is the foundation of a new book on the scourge of domestic violence

One Great Sentence

“He was followed by 30 seconds of silence, during which every sigh toured the walls of the church.”

By Jacqui Banaszynski
May 3, 2019

From "The Last Daughter," a personal essay by Ioana Burtea

Story Craft

Foreshadow forward; echo back

By Ben Yagoda
May 2, 2019

The art of the "callback" in comedy, film, literature and journalism: When repetition isn't redundancy, but theme and structure

Story Craft

A young journalist is inspired by fickle spring weather (and an old newspaper story)

By Kelley Benham French and Ken Fuson
April 30, 2019

How a 300-word assignment, and a quick read of Ken Fuson's "What a Day!" from 1995, was channeled into a nonfiction prose poem

Narrative News

Going public with the private pain of suicide

By Jacqui Banaszynski
April 24, 2019

National Headliner winner: A journalist finally faces the hardest questions about her mother's death in a story that may help others heal

Story Craft

Learning from what seem the unkindest cuts

By Caren Chesler
April 23, 2019

A science journalist comes to terms with what is lost — and not — when favorite passages are edited out of her long-form story

Notable Narratives

About a bear: The story behind the story of “The Loneliest Polar Bear”

By Julia Shipley
April 19, 2019

How The Oregonian tracked the uncertain fate of an abandoned bear cub and created a multi-media phenomenon that informed other projects

Narrative News

The sentences that make the stories

By Jacqui Banaszynski
April 18, 2019

Two books honored by the 2019 Pulitzer Prizes; two simple sentences from those books; lessons in journalism inspired by those sentences

Narrative News

Insight from the other side of the notebook

By Matt Tullis
April 16, 2019

In the wake of unspeakable grief, parents from the 2012 Sandy Hook school shootings kept lists of journalists they would, and wouldn't, talk to

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