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Dear Storyboard community:
I’m excited to share a new Nieman Storyboard podcast episode, featuring an interview with four-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ken Armstrong.
During his time at the Chicago Tribune, The Seattle Times, The Marshall Project, and ProPublica, Armstrong, a 2001 Nieman Fellow, has reported, written, and edited some of the most powerful investigative work of the past two decades — and he’s always been generous with his time and expertise, previously sharing lessons with journalists at both Storyboard and Nieman Reports.
This week is no different, as he sat down with me to discuss his latest award-winning work at Bloomberg News, where he serves as senior editor and narrative coach for global investigations.
The show notes and reading list are below, and you can listen to our conversation in your favorite podcast app or on YouTube.
“What I found is that stories stick with people in a way that information doesn’t. People remember stories. They remember being surprised, feeling outraged. They remember relating to someone or feeling for someone. They remember having their heart broken. And if memories from reading a story are attached to meaning, to a sense that something important is broken and needs to be fixed, then it’s not just a story. It also has a takeaway.”
[ Read the story ]
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Links of note
- Congratulations to Henry Chu, 2015 Nieman Fellow and veteran foreign correspondent and editor, who has been named the new curator of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard. Chu will be the ninth curator in the foundation’s 88-year history and starts his new role on Aug. 3. He succeeds former Nieman Curator Ann Marie Lipinski, who stepped down in July 2025. He has been serving as the foundation’s interim leader since that time and was deputy curator for a year before that. “My Nieman year was a transformative one, and I’m honored to be entrusted with keeping the fellowship fresh and vital for future cohorts,” Chu said. “Nieman plays an important role in bolstering journalism worldwide through our distinguished alumni and through our publications and other activities. It’s all the more necessary given the challenges our industry faces.” Read more at the Harvard Gazette.
- Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy is accepting submissions for the David Nyhan Prize for Public Policy Journalism, which honors mid-career and later-career journalists whose work shines a light on politics and policy making. The application is open to U.S.-based journalists working in any medium. The nomination deadline is Sept. 17.
- “Why the Best Writing Advice Is Often the Weirdest.” This New Yorker essay from David O’Neill is inspired by writer Lucy Ives’s new book “three six five: prompts, acts, divinations (an inexhaustible compendium for writing),” which suggests that the best writing advice is far out on the fringes where we can drop our fears. “The prompts offer tasks ranging from reviewing ‘an imaginary book,’ to repeating a word until it stops making sense. (A punk friend gave Ives this mind-bending idea when she was sixteen.) They are gnomic (‘create a circular work’) and ambitious (‘write a thirty-page sentence’). If you can pull off that last one, Ives assures us, ‘you are ready for the big leagues!’”
Keep seeking out weirdness, and keep sharing your stories,
Mark Armstrong
Editor
Nieman Storyboard
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