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Dear Storyboard community,
For this week's Nieman Storyboard podcast, I sat down with Mary Schmich, the Pulitzer Prize-winning former columnist for the Chicago Tribune and now host of the new podcast "Division Street Revisited."
In the middle of our conversation, we got to talking about the role that she held for 29 years — metro columnist — and what our communities lose when those jobs, and the jobs of so many other local reporters, disappear.
Schmich's position allowed her to write features, opinion pieces, breaking news, and personal essays, all in one box. (And as she reminded me, her column was inside an actual box on the page that she had to fill.)
The internet has led us to believe that now, anyone can be a columnist. In some ways, that is true: Many of us self-publish, and the online world responds with comments and likes. But the global nature of the internet has left a gap in local storytelling — and self-publishing and social media don't guarantee that anyone really hears you.
When I read Mary's work, I see someone out in the community, listening to people, lifting them up. As she told The Washington Post's Paul Farhi in 2021, the missing piece is "connection."
This gets me closer to an answer to the existential question I still struggle with: What is journalism, and why does it matter?
Journalists are out there, right now, connecting with people to make sure their stories are not forgotten. That alone has immense value.
How do you define journalism?
Tell me your answers, and I'd love to feature you in a future newsletter: editor@niemanstoryboard.org.
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Links of Note
- Finalists have been announced for the 2025 Livingston Awards, honoring "the best reporting and storytelling by journalists under 35 across all forms of journalism." Get the full list of nominees here.
- Speaking of the importance of local storytelling, former Charlotte magazine editor Michael Graff has launched a new site, The Charlotte Optimist, dedicated to North Carolina’s most populous city. "The Charlotte Optimist is a new nonprofit publication for our city. It aims to lead with love and gratitude and a willingness to listen and give. It’ll strive, if sometimes imperfectly, to put those things into practice in the form of journalism and stories." The first issue arrives May 4.
- "So Difficult. So Worth It." A lovely ode to rejection for writers and storytellers, by Naz Riahi.
- "How to Build a Narrative Podcast Unit Inside a Newsroom." At Transom.org, New Hampshire Public Radio's Katie Colaneri, Lauren Chooljian, and Jason Moon share how they organized their newsroom's "Document" team to produce serialized podcast projects. "The short answer is: my station thought it was a good idea. My colleagues and I proved we could pull it off — and the work resonated with listeners. But in truth, it wasn’t that simple."
Keep sharing your stories,
Mark Armstrong
Editor
Nieman Storyboard
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