On the latest episode of the Nieman Storyboard podcast, Washington Post technology reporter Drew Harwell joins Storyboard Editor Mark Armstrong for a conversation about his feature story on “Emilycc,” a Texas-based Twitch streamer who has livestreamed her entire life, 24 hours a day, for the last three years.
For his story, “Inside the life of a 24/7 streamer: ‘What more do you want?’,” Harwell traveled to Texas to meet Emily, and he wrote it with the understanding that he was bridging two very different worlds — the streaming community on Twitch and the readers of The Washington Post.
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“A lot of people saw [the story] as extremely bleak," Harwell said. "And I think it is bleak in a way, when you think a lot of the story is about the loneliness of our culture. I found it also interesting [that] some viewers of Emily read it and thought, ‘This is more depressing than it needs to be. It's too dramatic — you know, her life is fine. She's playing video games all day. What's the big problem?’”
Emily later read the Post story aloud on her livestream, and Harwell said she acknowledged some of the loneliness and isolation she feels. “And I thought that made her a great character in a way, because she was raw about her own emotions in a way that you don't necessarily always see from people.”
Harwell joined The Washington Post in 2014, and his work has been honored by the Gerald Loeb Awards (2024) and the George Polk Awards (2021). Before joining the Post, Harwell wrote for the Tampa Bay Times, immersing himself in the Florida paper’s narrative tradition.
The excerpts below are edited for length and clarity.
On walking his story subjects through the reporting process:
I had the conversation with [Emily] of everything that goes into this, which is often a really uncomfortable conversation with sources because the news reporting situation is so unusual for people. They find it extremely weird to have somebody kind of around them jotting notes in a notepad. So I always try to validate their feelings for how weird it might seem, but to also remind them, that at the end of this, there's going to be a story, [and] people will be able to understand your life in a new way.
I walked her through this whole conversation, and it was funny because she was completely normal with it in a way that no other source has really been, because she has been watched for three years. So for me to be there was just one more set of eyeballs in the stack of eyeballs that's already on her all the time.
As we went through the writing process and fact-checking, and the “no surprises” calls, she was game to talk about these really uncomfortable moments in her life with her parents, and with her loneliness and her isolation and her sadness, and the things I was hesitant about bringing up, because some people don't want those in the paper. She was all for it because she had basically opened herself to that.
On being livestreamed while reporting:
All of my interviews with her were streamed. So [during] my preview calls with her, I could see the chat watching my questions to her in real time, and I would ask a question and somebody would say, ‘Oh, that's a stupid question.’ ... And I'm like, oh my God, I shouldn't even watch this.
There's actually one moment where she stepped away to go to the bathroom, and I was just kind of sitting at her desk and the camera was on me. People were watching me just kind of sit there by myself, and I was watching the screen and they started talking to me. So I was like, OK, I guess I should be talking back.
I was probably streamed for 30 seconds in isolation, and I could feel my face just getting warm. Like I was flushing. And it was actually great, because I got this understanding of what her life is like 24 hours a day for multiple years.
On being a journalist in an era of media distrust:
People talk a lot about distrust in the media and how that's changed over the years. I think some of that is a function of bad things that have happened from journalists over the years. We are not perfect. But also, we as an institution have been attacked and criticized from a partisan perspective for many years, right? We've had this persona placed onto us, and we haven't really done a good job of necessarily just saying that we're all just a bunch of random normies basically.
We have notepads. We go out and ask people questions. We are trying to be a reflection of what we see. We're just people like you. We're just observers. I think it is generational, but also there are some throughlines in terms of when people think of the legacy media, the mainstream media, they may think of a bunch of elite Ivy-trained people who never leave their bubble and may parachute in and give this story that is wrapped up in their own biases. And there's certainly that in journalism. But there are also a lot of people who are just curious and just want to tell good stories.
On narrative and story length:
Most of my stories are not 100 inches [around 4,000 words]. Most of them are a quarter of that. And I think you can still do great narrative in there. 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.
On the value of compelling storytelling:
Being at a writer's paper like [the Tampa Bay Times], it could start to feel like, Oh, are we all just navel-gazing? But people really love those stories. I really love those stories. As a reporter, to be doing those, they were always so fun and those were the kinds of stories that stuck with people.
Reading List: Authors, Books, and Stories Mentioned
- “Inside the life of a 24/7 streamer: ‘What more do you want?’” (Drew Harwell, The Washington Post, May 2025)
- “The 40-something single dad shaping liberal media from his laptop” (Drew Harwell, The Washington Post, April 2025)
- “Black Mirror”
- “TikTok CEO’s mission: Fend off a ban. It may be a ‘death wish’” (Drew Harwell, The Washington Post, March 2023)
- “Trump dines with top meme coin holders, shrugging off ethics concerns” (Cat Zakrzewski and Drew Harwell, The Washington Post, May 2025)
- “Truth Social investors hoped to get ‘very rich’ after Trump’s win. Not quite.” (Drew Harwell, The Washington Post, November 2024)
- “They stormed the Capitol. Now they’re selling merch.” (Ellie Silverman and Drew Harwell, The Washington Post, May 2025)
- Michael Kruse
- Lane DeGregory
- Kelley Benham French
- “In Slammer, Honey Buns Sweeten the Situation” (Drew Harwell, Tampa Bay Times, 2011)
- “After the Sky Fell” (Brady Dennis, Tampa Bay Times, 2005)
- “Telling True Stories” (Nieman Foundation)
- Anne Hull
- Ben Terris
- Drew Harwell's Washington Post archive
Show Credits
Hosted and produced by Mark Armstrong
Associate producer: Marina Leigh
Episode editor: Kelly Araja
Audience editor: Adriana Lacy
Promotional support: Ellen Tuttle
Operational support: Paul Plutnicki, Peter Canova
Nieman Foundation curator: Ann Marie Lipinski
Deputy curator: Henry Chu
Music: “Golden Grass,” by Blue Dot Sessions (www.sessions.blue)
Cover design by Adriana Lacy
Nieman Storyboard is presented by the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard.
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