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Dear Storyboard community,
If you want a glimpse of how writers approach their work, look to their bookshelves for clues. Or ask them about their open tabs, their podcast feeds, Spotify playlists, and which writers they've bookmarked, to read later or save forever.
This week's Nieman Storyboard podcast with Washington Post tech reporter Drew Harwell offers an excellent example. Harwell shares an all-star list of former colleagues, editors, and mentors who shaped his perspective on narrative journalism — many of whom hail from the Tampa Bay Times, where he worked during his early reporting career. It includes names (Lane DeGregory, Michael Kruse, Anne Hull, Kelley Benham French) that Storyboard readers will know well.
One of my favorite parts of a podcast is the show notes, and the resulting reading list that springs from a conversation. Special thanks to associate producer Marina Leigh for putting these lists together. You can find them all here — with reading recommendations like "When Crack Was King" by Donovan X. Ramsey (selected by Akiba Solomon) and "Under the Sea Wind" by Rachel Carson (picked by Kim Cross).
"Narrative is not an inch count. It's not a 'disappear for six months' thing. It's a thing you can apply in every story. It's the way you ask questions, it's the way you write things, it’s the value you place on real-world stuff: going to the place, learning the details, seeing everything, asking the name of the dog, getting the color of the car, really caring about those details. You should apply those in the ways that they work as much as you can, because that's what makes storytelling fun. That color and nuance, you can't replace that."
— Thanks again to Drew Harwell for joining me on this week's Nieman Storyboard podcast. He shares insights on how to write about people's online lives, including the story of "Emilycc," a woman in Texas who has been streaming her life 24/7 on Twitch for more than three years.
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Links of note
- "New York City was gridded for life, not death, and by the late eighteen-twenties there was no good place to put all the bodies. Burial grounds were brimming. New Yorkers walked around holding vinegar-soaked handkerchiefs to their faces, believing that ‘putrid miasmas’ emanated from graveyards and killed people." I love how former Storyboard editor Paige Williams enlists all of the reader's senses to transport us to 19th century New York (and uncover the ways we lived and died), as she opens this fascinating history of the 478-acre Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, the final resting place for New Yorkers including Jean-Michel Basquiat and Leonard Bernstein.
- "Strategic (And Unplanned!) Pivots in Podcasting and Beyond." Storyboard contributor Christina M. Tapper, who recently interviewed Akiba Solomon for our podcast, is hosting a free "open-dialogue office hours exploring how podcast careers really take shape," hosted through AIR Media's SoundPath.
- "A podcast episode timeline." A reminder from journalist Alice Driver about freelance projects and how much time they actually take to complete. Driver recently produced a Spanish podcast episode with Pablo Argüelles at Radio Ambulante. All told, the episode took eight months.
- Finally, congratulations to Henry Chu (2015 Nieman Fellow), who has been named interim curator at the Nieman Foundation. “I am deeply honored to serve as interim curator, especially as someone who has benefited so much from Nieman’s fellowship program and its other services to journalism. Its mission to promote and elevate the standards of journalism is more relevant and necessary than ever."
Keep sharing your stories,
Mark Armstrong
Editor
Nieman Storyboard
Follow the Nieman Storyboard Podcast
On Bluesky: @niemanstoryboard.org
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Photo by Topher McKee on Unsplash
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