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Dear Storyboard community:
I don't know who needs to hear this right now — perhaps it’s more the decision-makers at the top of news organizations than the journalists on the ground — but good work takes time.
This week's Nieman Storyboard podcast guest, photojournalist Stephanie Keith, didn’t have a paid assignment when she started showing up with her camera to the corridors of the immigration courts at 26 Federal Plaza in New York City.
During the following months, she documented the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents as they detained undocumented immigrants outside of their court hearings, and in many cases separated them from their families and loved ones.
Embarking on a job without any guarantee of getting paid at the end is a risk she acknowledges not everyone is able to take, but New York magazine eventually picked up her work and published one of the year’s most powerful cover images.
On this week’s podcast, Keith talks about photojournalism's essential role in telling true stories, and how she approaches photography and video in this era of viral moments. Through her lens, we see the reality of what’s happening in New York, and across the country.
She also offers some important advice to journalists about working on projects you believe in:
“Any of the projects that I've done really successfully, it’s because I went all in on the project. Like Occupy Wall Street — I went down to Zuccotti Park every single day for months. At Standing Rock, I lived in North Dakota for six weeks straight. And for Federal Plaza I went down almost every day for like four months. So I think it’s the ‘all-in’ aspect that really produces results. You learn all about the people. You get into a rhythm, and it’s not something that you can just drop in and out of.
“You have to do this continuous coverage to get good results. So I think if you are really into a project, don’t let any naysayers hold you back. Just believe in yourself and just go all in on your project.”
“When you photograph, you’re really photographing the truth. Even if things don't change right away — it's still important to create a record of the truth.”
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Links of note
- Harvard's Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy is accepting submissions for the 2026 Goldsmith Awards, including the Goldsmith Book Prize (deadline: Dec. 18, 2025) and Goldsmith Prizes for Investigative Reporting and Explanatory Reporting (deadlines: Jan. 5, 2026). The awards, with cash prizes from $5,000 to $25,000, “honor excellence in journalism that fosters more insightful debate and public understanding about government, politics and public policy in the United States.”
- At Long Lead's Depth Perception newsletter, The Washington Post's former “TikTok guy” Dave Jorgenson questions the conventional wisdom about telling stories via social media. “I don’t believe that younger people have shorter attention spans compared to older people. I think we all are getting shorter attention spans maybe, but it’s not a generational thing necessarily. I think overall what’s happening is that people are just getting their media in different ways. Maybe young people aren’t watching cable, but they are watching three-hour podcasts, right? Or listening to them.”
- Storyboard contributor Mallary Tenore Tarpley shares lessons for authors about appearing on podcasts to publicize your book. (And we were grateful to be one of Tarpley's impressive 75 podcast stops.) “The truth is, publicity can seem nebulous. With this in mind, I’ve found it helpful to develop clarifying messages about why I choose to spend so much time on publicity; this helps me stay intrinsically motivated even in moments when extrinsic factors feel discouraging.”
- We've been receiving some fantastic Storyboard “Best of 2025” submissions. This is your final reminder to let us know about your favorite stories (short or longform), podcasts, books, and documentaries by this weekend! Fill out the form and share one or two picks, plus tell me about one thing you worked on this year and what you learned from it.
Keep supporting great work, and keep sharing your stories,
Mark Armstrong
Editor
Nieman Storyboard
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