Articles

Trying to find the dividing line between "travel writing" and "writing about place"

Trying to find the dividing line between “travel writing” and “writing about place”

It all started with a dusty photo album and a torn children’s map of the world.After countless hours spent sitting cross-legged on the cold concrete floor of our unfinished basement,…
February 2, 2017
Niki Kottmann
"I’m here to remind you today that great journalism can also find ordinary, regular people and find the extraordinary in what they do"

“I’m here to remind you today that great journalism can also find ordinary, regular people and find the extraordinary in what they do”

The focus of this week’s “The Future of News: Journalism in a Post-Truth Era” at Harvard was, understandably, the (pretty terrifying) landscape for journalists dealing with the new Trump administration and…
February 2, 2017
Kari Howard

“What I can hear are occasional coyotes and a constant chorus of ‘Baby the Rain Must Fall’ from the jukebox in the Snake Room next door, and if I were also to hear those dying voices, those Midwestern voices drawn to this lunar country for some unimaginable atavistic rites, ‘rock of ages cleft for me,’ I think I would lose my own reason.”

Why is it great? This essay has a more famous line, which is being quoted a lot these days: “Then is when we join the fashionable madmen, and then is…
February 1, 2017
Kari Howard
Annotation Tuesday! Adrian Chen and “Unfollow”

Annotation Tuesday! Adrian Chen and “Unfollow”

The New Yorker writer talks about his story on the awakening of a daughter of the reviled Westboro Baptist Church, calling it "a culmination of things I was writing about…
January 31, 2017
Katia Savchuk
Lou: "You've got spunk." (Mary beams.) Lou: "I hate spunk." But her spunk made Mary Tyler Moore our role model

Lou: “You’ve got spunk.” (Mary beams.) Lou: “I hate spunk.” But her spunk made Mary Tyler Moore our role model

Just in time for the weekend, here’s a little list of some of the things I’ve been listening to and reading this week, some of it online — Storyboard included,…
January 27, 2017
Kari Howard
5 Questions: Julie Beck and "When Are You Really an Adult?"

5 Questions: Julie Beck and “When Are You Really an Adult?”

When I sat down to write this, I was a millennial about to tackle one of many adulthood markers – college graduation – and I struggled with the feeling of…
January 26, 2017
Kaitlynn Martin

“A big pair of garden shears sat on the counter, as foreboding as Chekhov’s gun on the mantel.”

Why is it great? Even without context, this line is tremendous. Playfully riffing off Chekhov’s rule that if you introduce a gun in the first act, it absolutely must go off by…
January 25, 2017
Kari Howard
Annotation Tuesday! Chris Hamby and "The Court That Rules the World"

Annotation Tuesday! Chris Hamby and “The Court That Rules the World”

Chris Hamby's recent investigative series for BuzzFeed reads like dystopian fiction. He tells us of a powerful “global super court” that companies use to sue sovereign nations for cutting into…
January 24, 2017
Katia Savchuk
A time of endings: a presidency, and a tree that held lifetimes of memories

A time of endings: a presidency, and a tree that held lifetimes of memories

Just in time for the weekend, here’s a little list of some of the things I’ve been listening to and reading this week, some of it online — Storyboard included,…
January 20, 2017
Kari Howard

“Frank Sinatra, holding a glass of bourbon in one hand and a cigarette in the other, stood in a dark corner of the bar between two attractive but fading blondes who sat waiting for him to say something.”

Why is it great? Yes, we deliberately launched this cool new feature with the first sentence of one of the most famous magazine articles of all time. Go big or…
January 18, 2017
Kari Howard