Sign up for the Nieman Storyboard newsletter, delivered every Friday in your inbox.
***
Dear Storyboard community,
I'm now seven months into writing this newsletter, and producing the Nieman Storyboard podcast, and it’s been a wonderful education so far.
We're a growing community of journalists, writers, producers, filmmakers, teachers, students, and readers. If there's an overarching mission, it's to better understand how journalism and storytelling help us connect with each other — and to provide tools and inspiration to go forth and practice journalism in our own communities, in our own ways.
Author Dana A. Williams is giving us some of that knowledge. This week's Nieman Storyboard podcast guest shared two important lessons in writing and reporting, which served her well as she wrote her new book, “Toni at Random: The Iconic Writer’s Legendary Editorship,” about Toni Morrison’s influential work as an editor at Random House:
- Libraries are full of stories, if you know where to look.
- When in doubt, construct a timeline.
Storyboard contributor Christina M. Tapper sits down with Williams, professor of African American Literature and dean of the Graduate School at Howard University, to talk about what we can learn from Morrison about editing and editor-writer relationships. Morrison edited more than 50 books, including works by Toni Cade Bambara, Lucille Clifton, Huey P. Newton, Leon Forrest, Gayl Jones, Angela Davis, and Muhammad Ali. They also discuss how Williams navigated through source material across multiple libraries, including Morrison's archives at Princeton University and Random House's archives at Columbia University. As Williams told Tapper:
I'll probably teach this in future seminars where I talk about working in the archive: I wish I had known that my first task should have been a timeline. I would have determined what kind of metadata I wanted to be able to search. If she had in correspondence that she met with James Baldwin, Maya Angelou, Angela Davis, and let's say, Stokely Carmichael — “we had a conversation about blank over lunch” — I wanted to go to her expense receipts to see where they went, to see where that restaurant was.
So in most instances, you would see her copy of the letter that she wrote, and then you would see the letter that whoever responded. The way the archive is now at Columbia, it's not in chronological order. It's just all there, and there are so many boxes.
Williams shares so much more about her own process, including the conversations she had with Toni Morrison herself, on this week's episode. Read the full show notes here.
[ Follow us in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. ]
Links of note
- “Hours later, my phone rang. The experience still raw, he proposed that he continue what he started with that email. He asked if Texas Monthly might publish his story, so that people could understand what happened on the river that night. What happened to his family.” Following up from last week’s newsletter, Texas Monthly Editor in Chief Ross McCammon writes about how the magazine came to publish the devastating firsthand account of the Texas floods by senior editor Aaron Parsley. Meanwhile, Storyboard contributor Mallary Tenore Tarpley breaks down a story by The Washington Post’s John Woodrow Cox about a counselor at Camp Mystic.
- “Effectively begging for access is really depressing.” Pablo Torre and Mina Kimes, who both established themselves as sports feature writers before moving on to TV and podcasting, talk candidly on Torre's podcast about the state of sports journalism and the difficulties they experienced while trying to write profiles about athletes.
- “20 Questions Every Writer Must Ask Themselves.” Years before he published his first book, author Maurice Carlos Ruffin was studying for a psychology degree, and he created a questionnaire for himself. “My purpose was to be honest about how my life and writing were going. I never really thought of it as a kind of mirror therapy, but that’s what it is. You look at yourself unflinchingly.” He’s now sharing those questions. “Take away from it what you will. I hope it helps you as much as it helped me.”
- “I think it is the job of the writer, of those who understand language and its power to wield it with purpose. To delight yes, but also to acknowledge the harms that are rampant and unchecked and ask questions that might bring us all to a greater truth. To grow us toward compassion.” From an acceptance speech by author Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, whose novel, “Chain-Gang All-Stars,” has been awarded the 2025 Inside Literary Prize, chosen by a jury of incarcerated people across six states.
Keep sharing your stories,
Mark Armstrong
Editor
Nieman Storyboard
Follow the Nieman Storyboard Podcast
On Bluesky: @niemanstoryboard.org
Subscribe to Storyboard
Get insights into the craft of journalism and storytelling in your inbox, delivered on Fridays.
