Author

5(ish) Questions: Ted Conover and “Immersion: A Writer's Guide to Going Deep”

5(ish) Questions: Ted Conover and “Immersion: A Writer’s Guide to Going Deep”

One of the first works I read by Ted Conover, the country’s reigning master of immersion reporting, was “Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing,” his 2000 book chronicling 10 months he spent…
February 7, 2017
The future of journalism: amid all the fretting, having faith in the ability to move people

The future of journalism: amid all the fretting, having faith in the ability to move people

Just in time for the weekend, here’s a little list of some of the things I’ve been listening to and reading this week, some of it online — Storyboard included,…
February 3, 2017
Trying to find the dividing line between "travel writing" and "writing about place"

Trying to find the dividing line between “travel writing” and “writing about place”

Two-time Pulitzer winner Paul Salopek, now on a years-long trek that is "slow journalism" personified, and two others talk about storytelling that happens to involve travel
February 2, 2017
"I’m here to remind you today that great journalism can also find ordinary, regular people and find the extraordinary in what they do"

“I’m here to remind you today that great journalism can also find ordinary, regular people and find the extraordinary in what they do”

The focus of this week’s “The Future of News: Journalism in a Post-Truth Era” at Harvard was, understandably, the (pretty terrifying) landscape for journalists dealing with the new Trump administration and…
February 2, 2017

“What I can hear are occasional coyotes and a constant chorus of ‘Baby the Rain Must Fall’ from the jukebox in the Snake Room next door, and if I were also to hear those dying voices, those Midwestern voices drawn to this lunar country for some unimaginable atavistic rites, ‘rock of ages cleft for me,’ I think I would lose my own reason.”

Why is it great? This essay has a more famous line, which is being quoted a lot these days: “Then is when we join the fashionable madmen, and then is…
February 1, 2017
Annotation Tuesday! Adrian Chen and “Unfollow”

Annotation Tuesday! Adrian Chen and “Unfollow”

The New Yorker writer talks about his story on the awakening of a daughter of the reviled Westboro Baptist Church, calling it "a culmination of things I was writing about…
January 31, 2017
Lou: "You've got spunk." (Mary beams.) Lou: "I hate spunk." But her spunk made Mary Tyler Moore our role model

Lou: “You’ve got spunk.” (Mary beams.) Lou: “I hate spunk.” But her spunk made Mary Tyler Moore our role model

Just in time for the weekend, here’s a little list of some of the things I’ve been listening to and reading this week, some of it online — Storyboard included,…
January 27, 2017
5 Questions: Julie Beck and "When Are You Really an Adult?"

5 Questions: Julie Beck and “When Are You Really an Adult?”

In her Atlantic piece, the writer captures that moment when you’ve worn a cap and gown but at the same time feel like a little kid playing dress-up
January 26, 2017

“A big pair of garden shears sat on the counter, as foreboding as Chekhov’s gun on the mantel.”

Why is it great? Even without context, this line is tremendous. Playfully riffing off Chekhov’s rule that if you introduce a gun in the first act, it absolutely must go off by…
January 25, 2017
Annotation Tuesday! Chris Hamby and "The Court That Rules the World"

Annotation Tuesday! Chris Hamby and “The Court That Rules the World”

Chris Hamby's recent investigative series for BuzzFeed reads like dystopian fiction. He tells us of a powerful “global super court” that companies use to sue sovereign nations for cutting into…
January 24, 2017