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Dear Storyboard community,
This week, Storyboard contributor (and amazing collage artist) Christina M. Tapper returns to our podcast for a conversation with journalist Danyel Smith, author of the pop music memoir “Shine Bright” and whose work has been published in The New York Times, ESPN, and NPR, among many other publications.
Smith speaks to her evolution as a writer, historian, and journalist, and confronts the complex feelings that many of us struggle with when it comes to sharing stories from our own lives and experiences.
As journalists, part of our training includes de-centering ourselves in our work. Smith has interviewed many of the biggest stars in pop music and sports, but when the time came to write her own memoir, she says she had to “be my own second voice” — the person sitting on her shoulder telling her that her story is important.
Part of that conscious effort means treating your writing with the respect it deserves. Smith is mindful about saving (rather than deleting) unused material from her stories, and tries to keep all of her past writing:
I have journals from when I was 11, so I'm not a big thrower away of things. And those times when I don't have something that I wish that I could put my hand on, either digitally or in an old dusty box, I’m mad at myself. Everything goes back to self-worth with me. I feel like I probably threw that away, or got rid of it in a moment of feeling like it wasn't worth keeping. I'm not saying we have to be pack rats. But to just throw away words that you've written — or for me, sometimes it's even concert stuff, or photos from old phones — I mean, I'm worth keeping.
This week's conversation also includes a heartfelt reading from Smith's deeply personal story for NPR, “Sade Saves,” published in 2020. Thank you to Smith and Tapper for sharing it with the Storyboard community.
“You have to remind yourself, or let me use the pronoun that is always difficult for me to use: ‘I’ need to remind myself, always, that my story is worth telling.”
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Links of note
- “As my longtime mentor Roy Peter Clark taught me: It’s better to write a lot about a little topic than a little about a big topic.” Mallary Tenore Tarpley breaks down the elements of a successful story pitch.
- The latest Texas Monthly spotlights the life and work of true crime reporting legend Skip Hollandsworth. He tells Editor-in-Chief Ross McCammon: “I’ve been dealing with Parkinson’s disease, which has slowed me down. But I still feel that same urge to find the next big story. My fire for the job has not in any way diminished. I have this great love for writing long stories, stories unique to Texas Monthly — and especially these long-form narratives we do on crime.” Hollandsworth also shares lessons from his reporting: “Early in my career, I would read over the transcripts of my interviews, and in the margins I’d write ‘SU,’ as in, ‘shut up’ … I’d talk over people just as they were about to say something brilliant.”
- The Finalists for the 2025 National Book Awards have been announced. Nonfiction nominees are Omar El Akkad, Julia Ioffe, Yiyun Li, Claudia Rowe, and Jordan Thomas, and winners for all categories will be announced Nov. 19.
- This week, journalists Leah Sottile and Ryan Haas debuted the second season of their podcast series “Hush” for Oregon Public Broadcasting, investigating the 2019 death of 18-year-old Sarah Zuber. Sottile writes about the trust she and Haas have to earn from their subjects in order to embark on such a big reporting project. For “Hush,” it started with Sottile writing a letter to Zuber's family.
Keep building trust — in your subjects, your readers, and yourself. And keep sharing your stories,
Mark Armstrong
Editor
Nieman Storyboard
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