Articles

What we’re watching: in which a battalion deploys, Ramadan ends, and a drawing unfolds to illustrate an argument

What we’re watching: in which a battalion deploys, Ramadan ends, and a drawing unfolds to illustrate an argument

Perhaps it’s just the nippy fall weather descending, but we have a multiplicity of crowdsourced, interactive and on-the-horizon projects. So, depending on your constitution, here are some nuggets of future-of-journalism…
September 24, 2010
Andrea Pitzer
GQ's "An Army of One": The war on terror finds its own Don Quixote

GQ’s "An Army of One": The war on terror finds its own Don Quixote

Though literary nonfiction takes its cues from literary fiction, William Faulkner would struggle to invent a more extreme character than his (possibly inadvertent) namesake Gary Faulkner, the subject of “An…
September 22, 2010
Andrea Pitzer
Colin Harrison and Sam Gwynne on the editor-writer partnership, going deep and the difference between a subject and a story

Colin Harrison and Sam Gwynne on the editor-writer partnership, going deep and the difference between a subject and a story

In yet more goodness from July's Mayborn Conference, we're happy to post this conversation between Colin Harrison, who is currently senior editor at Scribner, and S.C. "Sam" Gwynne, author of "Empire of…
September 21, 2010
Andrea Pitzer
What’s in it from me? Crowdsourced magazines and storytelling

What’s in it from me? Crowdsourced magazines and storytelling

As a child, did you ever imagine yourself waiting for a call from people in need, people who were praying that you'd see their signal and come to the rescue?…
September 16, 2010
Andrea Pitzer

Tom French on zoo stories, narrative nonfiction and the pleasures of playing anthropologist

In 2007, St. Petersburg Times reporter Tom French delivered a nine-part series about Tampa's Lowry Park Zoo, which led to the writing of "Zoo Story," published in July. In his book,…
September 14, 2010
Andrea Pitzer
From who's telling the stories to what they're about: Nieman Reports looks at foreign correspondence

From who’s telling the stories to what they’re about: Nieman Reports looks at foreign correspondence

If you haven’t seen it yet, check out the fall issue of Nieman Reports for the skinny on “Reporting From Faraway Places: Who Does It and How?” Inside, you’ll find…
September 13, 2010
Andrea Pitzer
L.A. Times reporter Christopher Goffard on structure, sympathy and how to make a story go: "The same thing that’s going to make people sit through a movie will make them sit through a 10,000-word series"

L.A. Times reporter Christopher Goffard on structure, sympathy and how to make a story go: "The same thing that’s going to make people sit through a movie will make them sit through a 10,000-word series"

For "Project 50: Four walls and a bed," our latest Notable Narrative, reporter Christopher Goffard spent two years following a Los Angeles-area program aimed at finding the most at-risk homeless…
September 10, 2010
Andrea Pitzer
Christopher Goffard's "Project 50" and the hard-core homeless of Los Angeles

Christopher Goffard’s "Project 50" and the hard-core homeless of Los Angeles

How do you take people -- ones whom your readers would cross the street to avoid -- and make them compelling enough to follow through a four-part series? Christopher Goffard…
September 9, 2010
Andrea Pitzer

Tommy Tomlinson on Ze Frank, newspapers and what comes next

Tommy Tomlinson has been a local columnist for The Charlotte Observer for the past 13 years but recently announced that he's switching jobs to embark on a storytelling experiment for…
September 7, 2010
Andrea Pitzer

What we’re reading, back-to-school edition: prison voices, the failure of imagination in storytelling, and the secret diary of a hedge fund manager

Teenage lifeguards abandon their perches to leathery veterans. The county fair's bounty of funnel cakes and fried beer peters out. Corduroy shopping starts in earnest. The academic year begins. In…
September 2, 2010
Andrea Pitzer