Articles

In with the new: the 2010-11 Nieman fellows arrive

The new group of Nieman fellows has arrived in Cambridge and will be spending this academic year diving into Harvard courses and research opportunities. I’ve taken the time talk one-on-one…
September 1, 2010
Andrea Pitzer

USA Today’s Joshua Hatch on digital storytelling, Katrina and using technology with "a narrative purpose"

We talked last week by phone with USA Today interactives director Joshua Hatch about "Five Years Later: Hurricane Katrina," the paper's attempt to document the recovery and continuing struggles of…
August 25, 2010
Andrea Pitzer

USA Today’s Katrina anniversary project: stories from the second line

When clicking across the digital universe, we like new bells and whistles as much as the next Twitter jockey. But with big multimedia projects, we want to feel the bones…
August 24, 2010
Andrea Pitzer
Hank Stuever on story structure, really reporting Christmas and the problem with the "sacred space" approach to narrative

Hank Stuever on story structure, really reporting Christmas and the problem with the "sacred space" approach to narrative

Washington Post reporter Hank Stuever writes in a variety of  narrative forms, from books to punchy television reviews and features. His latest book, "Tinsel: A Search for America's Christmas Present,"…
August 20, 2010
Andrea Pitzer
Laurie Hertzel on growing up in newspapers and what she learned from the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald

Laurie Hertzel on growing up in newspapers and what she learned from the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald

In "News to Me," Laurie Hertzel writes about life as an ink-stained wretch during nearly 20 years at the Duluth News Tribune. Now books editor at the (Minneapolis) Star Tribune,…
August 18, 2010
Andrea Pitzer

What we’re watching, from Korean War veterans to skate punk trespassers and a town that lives off prisons

This round of selections shows the diversity of visual storytelling, from drawings to documentary and interactive immersion. Whether it’s kinetic camera work or the power of a single subject, each…
August 17, 2010
Andrea Pitzer

Richard Morgan on payback, freelancing and the myth of the "made man"

Richard Morgan recently found a new measure of fame writing about writing, with his funny/terrifying piece “Seven Years as a Freelance Writer, or, How to Make Vitamin Soup.” Though Morgan’s…
August 12, 2010
Andrea Pitzer

The very, very personal post: Richard Morgan, Jennifer Lawler and a new kind of Notable Narrative

Sometimes long posts appear online that would feel out of place anywhere else. These pieces are often first-person, revelatory and not edited to fit the brand of a magazine, newspaper…
August 11, 2010
Andrea Pitzer

What we're reading: in which we consider segregated high school reunions, the vanishing middle class, notes from a Pynchon conference and "death in the age of the Internet"

As we try to get the mildew out of the swimsuits we left in the corner over the weekend, we wanted to leave you a pile of stories for when…
August 9, 2010
Andrea Pitzer

Vanity Fair’s Bryan Burrough on writing narrative: “people are dying to put down your article”

In what might be the only performance of Texas stand-up comedy about narrative writing, Vanity Fair writer Bryan Burrough recently offered practical tips for long-form storytelling to a Mayborn Conference…
August 6, 2010
Andrea Pitzer