Articles

Jerry Brewer on change-up pitches, round characters and how to ruin a perfectly good column

Jerry Brewer on change-up pitches, round characters and how to ruin a perfectly good column

In our last post, the Editors’ Roundtable looked at a Seattle Times column about a record-setting Girl Scout cookie-seller who got to throw out the ceremonial first pitch at a Seattle…
June Editors' Roundtable No. 2: The Seattle Times, a first pitch, and the Queen of Samoas

June Editors’ Roundtable No. 2: The Seattle Times, a first pitch, and the Queen of Samoas

We're fine-tuning our Editors’ Roundtable, moving toward more frequent postings and smaller groups of editors looking at each story. As part of those changes, today we highlight our second June…

Slow violence and environmental storytelling

Strategies to plot and give shape to formless threats whose fatal repercussions are dispersed across space and time

Afghanistan stories: Foreign Policy tells a bleak "Groom’s Tale"

Our latest Notable Narrative, “A Groom’s Tale,” introduces us to Ozyr Khul, who is about to get married in Oqa, Afghanistan. Anna Badkhen, who wrote the story for Foreign Policy, has…

Stephanie McCrummen on bare-bones writing, "working backwards" and editors' good ideas

Yesterday, our Editors’ Roundtable dissected “Ala. tornado twists two families together” by Stephanie McCrummen, which follows the development of an unlikely connection in the aftermath of a tornado. Late last…
June Editors' Roundtable: The Washington Post finds order in chaos

June Editors’ Roundtable: The Washington Post finds order in chaos

For the first Roundtable of the month, our editors looked at “Ala. tornado twists two families together” by Stephanie McCrummen from The Washington Post. The story, published early in May,…

From research to story: more from the BIO 2011 conference

A bevy of biographers gathered in May in Washington, D.C., at the second annual Compleat Biographer Conference to discuss how to chase down subjects and make their lives into great stories.…

What we’re reading: a roundup of tornado stories

The next Editors’ Roundtable, which will run on Monday, looks at a story on the tornado that hit Rainsville, Ala., earlier this month. Unfortunately, tragedy has struck again, and journalists…

Esquire goes home with Philip Roth

Our latest Notable Narrative turns cliché upside down to see what will fall out of its pockets. Maybe you can’t go home again, but Esquire’s Scott Raab wants to see…

The power of place: Robert Caro on setting at the 2011 BIO Conference

“Show, don’t tell” is a mantra of narrative writers everywhere, but even the most useful adage can lose meaning with repetition. Before a lunchtime audience of writers at the Second…