Narrative News

Reflections on the challenges and triumphs of masculinity in changing times

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

By Kari Howard • May 16, 2019

Conservative publisher and media mogul Andrew James Breitbart (1969-2012) was among the men profiled by Steve Oney

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Annotation Tuesday!

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

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

By Katia Savchuk • May 14, 2019

Digital Storytelling

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

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

By Chip Scanlan • May 9, 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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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

Why's This So Good?

Avoiding false judgments in journalism about Trump’s evangelical supporters

By Brook Wilensky-Lanford
April 11, 2019

A religion scholar assesses how the Washington Post's Stephanie McCrummen avoids predictable pitfalls in "Judgment Days"

Digital Storytelling

“74 seconds” that led to a man’s death, a cop’s trial and a 22-episode podcast

By M.F. Sánchez
April 10, 2019

2019 Power of Narrative: How a Minnesota Public Radio team turned a real-time rolling news into a compelling serial drama

Narrative News

“Losing Earth:” Nathaniel Rich’s epic on the failure to confront climate change

By Jacqui Banaszynski
April 9, 2019

A new book, a "Fresh Air" interview, and a reprise of a deep-dive conversation

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