Articles

Best Men

This series was written and reported by Thomas Farragher and Patricia Wen. It recounts the experiences of a couple and their two sons. One son is straight, the other gay.…

Band of Brothers

This piece is about guilt, loyalty and the relationship between ordinary Americans and soldiers fighting in Iraq. It’s also a good test case for the "It’s not about you" principle…

Spy Robert Schaller’s Life of Secrecy, Betrayal and Regrets

This is an engaging reconstruction. It’s very explicitly reconstruction, with its retrospective and explanatory quotes. It’s a tale of a man reflecting on his life, telling his story, after many…

Disposable Workers of the Oil and Gas Fields

Scenes, character, a human voice and the first person soften and enliven the investigative approach in this piece about gruesome deaths on Western oil and gas fields. Lacking clear statistical…

Casualties of Conscience

Not long after reading this quasi-narrative about U.S. soldiers who have deserted the military, we came across a piece in The New York Times about increased prosecutions of such deserters.…

Learning Their Lessons

Here’s what Sandoval e-mailed us about this story: “Most young journalists believe they have to spend six months or so to publish a quality narrative piece. But that’s not always…

Facing Life With a Lethal Gene

Katharine Moser asks for a genetic test to determine if she will eventually develop Huntington’s disease. She learns she does carry the gene mutation that caused the death of her…

Sex-Crime Cop’s Pursuit: Who was telling the truth?

Rather than reconstruct a tale of crime from the victim’s perspective or after the suspect is found guilty—approaches we see more often—O’Hagan tells the story of a cop. The story…

A People Torn: Cleo’s Story

Schmickle and the project’s editor, Laurie Hertzel, wrote us the following comments on this project:Sharon Schmickle: Two years ago, I began hearing that several thousand Liberians had arrived recently in…

Head Trip

Bearak’s use of first person is especially unusual in this piece about Adam Greenberg, a baseball player who, on his first day in the Majors, gets beaned in the head…