Articles

Audio Danger: Radio storytelling and the perils of digital permanence

Audio Danger: Radio storytelling and the perils of digital permanence

Back in the distant 1990s, This American Life host Ira Glass described a recurring dream of NPR’s Scott Simon: Simon would shoot a basketball over and over, but then it…

“Why’s this so good?” — The Spring Break edition

In our “Why’s this so good?” series, contributors break down a favorite piece of journalistic storytelling. In honor of this, the season of Spring Break, three great reads in first-person…
Want to write great narrative? Study screenwriting.

Want to write great narrative? Study screenwriting.

“That’s all fine,’’ the L.A. film executive said briskly, “but who’s the antagonist?’’Cut to: Me, author of a soon-to-be published biography of the 1940s/’50s wrestler and pop culture figure who…
Remembering Matthew Power

Remembering Matthew Power

The magazine world suffered a deep loss Monday with the death of writer Matthew Power. An adventure-loving contributor to Harper’s, VQR, Outside, GQ and The Atavist, among others, Power died, reportedly of heat stroke,…

Annotation Tuesday! Roger Angell and the pitcher with a major-league case of the yips

Roger Angell has been writing stories about baseball since the year before John F. Kennedy was assassinated. He’s been a contributor to The New Yorker since 1944 and became fiction…
Pinned: Elizabeth Kolbert, Gillian Blake, Todd C. Frankel, John Jeremiah Sullivan, storytellers in trouble, a healing cruise and two schools of cliches

Pinned: Elizabeth Kolbert, Gillian Blake, Todd C. Frankel, John Jeremiah Sullivan, storytellers in trouble, a healing cruise and two schools of cliches

For your weekend reading pleasure, items from our Pinterest boards …Recommended Reading:A news photographer, a layoff, a death, and then things got even worse. From the John Woodrow Cox’s short…
What we're reading: Narratives on the Boston Marathon bombing and a tunnel tragedy + essays on empathy and religion + smartphone photos as a reporting tool + the future of digital longform

What we’re reading: Narratives on the Boston Marathon bombing and a tunnel tragedy + essays on empathy and religion + smartphone photos as a reporting tool + the future of digital longform

What we’re reading, in the world of narrative journalism, essays and academia:Long Mile Home: Boston Under Attack, the City’s Courageous Recovery, and the Epic Hunt for Justice, by Scott Helman…

Writing the book: Ben Montgomery on Grandma Gatewood’s Walk

One night in January 2013, deep into the writing of Grandma Gatewood’s Walk, I found myself alone at the keyboard, crying. Weeping, really. Thinking back, the storm of depression and anxiety…
The Bread Loaf files: Ted Conover, Cheryl Strayed, Richard Bausch and Robert Frost on craft, dedication, discipline, poetry and what to ban from your bookshelf

The Bread Loaf files: Ted Conover, Cheryl Strayed, Richard Bausch and Robert Frost on craft, dedication, discipline, poetry and what to ban from your bookshelf

This week’s theme: semi-obscure archives that might prove valuable to your narrative storytelling. On Tuesday, we highlighted Mark Berkey-Gerard‘s posts on multimedia narrative, which he warehouses at his classroom-based website, Campfire Journalism. Today,…
How to interview, structure, choose your medium, edit for sound, identify the story arc and more

How to interview, structure, choose your medium, edit for sound, identify the story arc and more

The new student of multimedia narrative may want to bookmark an archive on digital storytelling by Mark Berkey-Gerard, who teaches online journalism at Rowan University, in New Jersey. A Columbia…