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Dear Storyboard community,
This week we have two new conversations about the ways we seek out bigger truths in our stories.
On the Nieman Storyboard podcast, I sat down with Nadia Reiman, reporter and editor covering immigration for “This American Life.” We focused on three stories from three distinct moments in recent history: a piece from 2019 about the changing asylum process, which earned Reiman and her colleagues the first-ever Pulitzer Prize for audio reporting; a story shortly after Trump was elected again in November 2024, speculating about what might happen if the administration followed through on its mass deportation plans; and most recently, a story from April about a woman searching for her fiancé, a Venezuelan immigrant who was arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and later discovered in a video arriving at a prison in El Salvador.
Rigorous reporting, combined with a strong voice guiding us along, allows “This American Life” to present human stories that speak the truth plainly. Reiman breaks down how she and her colleagues find and tell those stories — from the core components of a “TAL” narrative, to the interviews, script-writing, editing, music scoring, interpreters, and in the case of anonymous sources, voice actors.
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Meanwhile, Storyboard contributor Minda Honey is back with a new conversation about the craft of memoir, this time with Irvin Weathersby Jr., author of the book “In Open Contempt: Confronting White Supremacy in Art and Public Space.” Honey calls it “a potent example of a travelogue that weaves in personal storytelling with history.” In his writing, Weathersby is seeking truth by putting himself in situations of discomfort:
How can I situate myself within these current moments but also within the timeline of history? To engage in general conversations and being very mindful of the things that I don't know and being OK with asking questions and being OK with my own ignorance.
[ Read the story ]
Links of note
- I'm always on the lookout for journalists who use their personal newsletters to report and write short narratives (send me your favorites: editor@niemanstoryboard.org). Leah Sottile is very good at this — her latest dispatch gives the history of an infamous billboard along Interstate 5 in Washington state that was erected by a "conspiratorial turkey farmer" in the 1960s to share his right-wing political views. Sottile called him "an OG troll": "People use Twitter now; he used a billboard with a dopey-looking Uncle Sam."
- "Always address the audience’s implied question, ‘Why does this matter now?’ Our stakes need to come early — and they need to be high enough for audiences to care.” More excellent podcast storytelling tips from Elaine Appleton Grant in her Sound Judgment newsletter.
- Another view of storytelling, from The Believer's interview with author Sheila Heti: “I don’t know if I know what plot is. I think you just have to get someone to the end of the book. There are many ways of doing that. It doesn’t have to be plot. It can be the switching of moods that a person becomes addicted to experiencing, or a train of thought they become curious about, or a tone they want to stay in. There are so many ways to keep somebody inside a book and to make them interested in what’s going on.”
- And finally, in news from our sister publication: Congrats to Samantha Henry, who has been named editor of Nieman Reports. “I am honored to continue Nieman Reports’ long tradition of standing for press freedom and shining light on the vitally important work of journalists around the world.”
Keep sharing your stories,
Mark Armstrong
Editor
Nieman Storyboard
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