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Dear Storyboard community,
This week we're excited to welcome back Elon Green as a contributor to Storyboard. He's a journalist and author of two books, "Last Call: A True Story of Love, Lust, and Murder in Queer New York" and the forthcoming "The Man Nobody Killed: Life, Death, and Art in Michael Stewart's New York."
As we were brainstorming ideas for Storyboard, I asked him about his favorite nonfiction books of the last few years. His immediate reply: "The Barn," by Wright Thompson, an account of the 1955 murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till in Mississippi. Thompson's book began as a story in The Atlantic and grew into a deeper history of the South and the forces that led to the horrific crime.
How did Thompson do it? Green believes you can learn a lot about how an author works — ranging from their book-proposal and reporting processes to the loved ones who sustain them — by looking at their acknowledgments pages.
Sure enough, Thompson offers Green some excellent insights and moving personal stories about how he reported and wrote the book. Read the full story here.
In Green's own acknowledgments for his new book, he writes that "at its most gratifying, journalism is the privilege to learn as you go." And he looks back on his early interviews and story annotations for Nieman Storyboard — interviewing everyone from Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah to Roger Angell — as his own version of a J-school education.
"That's how I learned to report, research, and write," Green told me. "Instead of studying the work of the greats in an academic setting, I got to ask them about it myself — a priceless experience."
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Links of note
- Columbia Journalism School and the Nieman Foundation have announced the 2025 shortlists for the J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Awards, the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize and the Mark Lynton History Prize. The Lukas Prize Project, established in 1998, honors the best in American nonfiction book writing. Get the full list here.
- Reeves Wiedeman wrote a terrific New York magazine profile of "Saturday Night Live" creator Lorne Michaels. It's all the more impressive given that a) Michaels didn't participate, b) some in his orbit were skittish about saying anything on the record, partially because they wanted to make sure they were invited to the show's 50th anniversary party, and c) there are already countless books and stories about Michaels and "SNL" — including a new biography by Susan Morrison.
For our purposes here on Storyboard, Choire Sicha asked Wiedeman the most important question of all: How did he keep track of all his sources?
Thank you for asking this question. I have a spreadsheet. It has many tabs. The tabs sort of morph and grow and then condense. I keep track in there of when I've reached out to people, how I've reached out to people, whether they've responded, little notes for things I want to talk to them about, priority for who I want to talk to first. On a story like this, there's been a couple hundred writers, almost 200 cast members, at least that many people who've worked there. Every story I start working on, I fire up a spreadsheet and just start filling in names. Maybe my excitement here is a little sad?
[Storyboard editor's note: Not sad at all!]
Interview your elders
Finally, I loved this Facebook post from journalist Laurie Gwen Shapiro, author of the forthcoming book "The Aviator and the Showman: Amelia Earhart, George Putnam, and the Marriage That Made an American Icon." I'm resharing it here with her permission:
One of the first things I tell my youngest students is to interview the oldest person they know. My first features assignment is always a profile, and if they’re unsure who to choose, I tell them: Start with the oldest person in your life. You may not get another chance.
One of my new students, all of 21, told me the oldest person she knew was her grandfather, who had dementia and was drifting in and out of awareness. She was considering profiling a basketball star instead. I told her, “You can write about the basketball star any time. But your grandfather? Do it now. Drop everything.”
I urged her to ask her mom for help—he recognizes her best and asked to have her mom sing with him, because music is often the last thing to go.
Yesterday, she messaged me: “The interview went better than I could have imagined.” Her grandfather had moments of clarity, he sang, and she decided to include the song in her first draft as multimedia.
Just now, she reached out again. Her grandfather had passed away. She wrote: “Oh my God, I can’t believe you made me do this. This is something I will have forever.”
Please, if you have an elder in your life—record them. Interview them. Capture their voice, their laughter, their songs. Do it as soon as you can. You will never regret it.
Keep sharing your stories,
Mark Armstrong
Editor
Nieman Storyboard
On Bluesky: @niemanstoryboard.org
Send me your story, book, podcast, and documentary recommendations: editor@niemanstoryboard.org
