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Let's hear it for women writers like Dorothy Parker and Zadie Smith the *other* 364 days

Let’s hear it for women writers like Dorothy Parker and Zadie Smith the *other* 364 days

This week, International Women’s Day really grabbed the spotlight with the Day Without a Woman protests and homages to role models on social media (shout-out to Nieman Lab’s great Instagram…
March 10, 2017
5(ish) Questions: Jesse Lenz and The Collective Quarterly magazine

5(ish) Questions: Jesse Lenz and The Collective Quarterly magazine

In today’s world of impossibly speeded-up journalism, with Twitter bursts its high-velocity symbol, a small group of renegades has resolutely slammed on the brakes to practice what it calls “slow…
March 9, 2017

“Hazel Morse was a large, fair woman of the type that incites some men when they use the word ‘blonde’ to click their tongues and wag their heads roguishly.”

Why is it great? With this opening line to her famous short story, Parker does so many things: She gives us an image of Hazel that’s Kodachrome clear: I can…
March 8, 2017
Notable Narrative: Bernt Jakob Oksnes and "The Baby in the Plastic Bag"

Notable Narrative: Bernt Jakob Oksnes and “The Baby in the Plastic Bag”

The words appear on a blank white screen, accompanied by an atonal, ominous peal of music.“One frosty October morning, a newborn baby boy is found inside a plastic bag inside…
March 7, 2017
The politics of language, from terrorists vs. freedom fighters to "carnage" in Chicago

The politics of language, from terrorists vs. freedom fighters to “carnage” in Chicago

We seem to have two recurring motifs going on this week on Storyboard — animals and the politicization of language. On the animal front, we have Christopher Solomon’s “cute even when…
March 3, 2017
5(ish) Questions: Latino USA producer Marlon Bishop on the backstory of the NPR show’s most downloaded episode ever

5(ish) Questions: Latino USA producer Marlon Bishop on the backstory of the NPR show’s most downloaded episode ever

A show that was more than a year in the making about the controversial prisoner Oscar López Rivera scored journalism gold, coming out just days after the Puerto Rican was…
March 2, 2017

“He watched a mouse saunter up the electric cord leading to the nonfunctioning clock over the hotel bar and asked the Chinese waitress in German whether it was a tiger.”

This vivid, funny, terrific sentence could have been drawn from Lewis Carroll, but it’s from the middle of a deadline story on the frustrations of two “peace commissions” that were unable to keep…
March 1, 2017
Annotation Tuesday! Christopher Solomon and "The Detective of Northern Oddities"

Annotation Tuesday! Christopher Solomon and “The Detective of Northern Oddities”

Profiles are hard. Too often they’re drenched in the writer’s attempts to make the subject seem larger than life. But good profiles have the opposite effect: Through their honesty and…
February 28, 2017
Some longform stories that will chill you in more ways than one

Some longform stories that will chill you in more ways than one

This week we’re getting a sneak preview of spring in Maine, and the two feet of snow is fast melting. But there’s still a bit of a chill in this…
February 24, 2017
Guy Larson and "Merv Curls Lead" -- it's kind of like "The Office" on ice

Guy Larson and “Merv Curls Lead” — it’s kind of like “The Office” on ice

You know when you absentmindedly click on a product and an ad for the thing seems to stalk you online for the rest of your life? (I once thought the…
February 23, 2017