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Cutting through numbing numbers with electrified writing

Cutting through numbing numbers with electrified writing

For many Americans, COVID news has joined the thrum of everyday life. But Charles Pierce warned readers in a recent newsletter the crisis shouldn’t be allowed to be part of…
October 1, 2021
Lane DeGregory: Intimate access to a Florida COVID-19 ward, with conditions

Lane DeGregory: Intimate access to a Florida COVID-19 ward, with conditions

As a writer who routinely embeds in her subjects’ lives, the COVID pandemic was a blow to Lane DeGregory’s reporting. She was barred from sit-down interviews, where she would normally…
September 30, 2021
How a top explanatory reporter does emotional interviews: With empathy

How a top explanatory reporter does emotional interviews: With empathy

Pulitzer Prize winner Ed Yong of The Atlantic takes the same open approach with COVID scientists and frontline nurses
September 29, 2021
Plain-spoken words about the "7 stages of severe COVID death" go viral

Plain-spoken words about the “7 stages of severe COVID death” go viral

In late August, the Los Angeles Times published an unvarnished description of illness and death from COVID-19, written by a respiratory therapist who has worked on the front lines of…
September 28, 2021
Jim Sheeler turned the simple obituary into a high and reverent art

Jim Sheeler turned the simple obituary into a high and reverent art

A brief anecdote in a Denver Post story about Pulitzer Prize winner Jim Sheeler describes how a new reporter was seated next to him in the newsroom of the Rocky…
September 23, 2021
The New Yorker explores a dilemma in Ultra-Orthodox divorce: What about the children?

The New Yorker explores a dilemma in Ultra-Orthodox divorce: What about the children?

Writer Larissa MacFarquhar is drawn to stories that help her sort out issues that have no clear solutions
September 21, 2021
How listening to foreign languages can enrich your writing

How listening to foreign languages can enrich your writing

An author and essayist listens to stories in in their native tongues to hear new rhythms, phrasing and metaphor
September 17, 2021
Reporting through privacy and pain to expose the scandal of Black amputations

Reporting through privacy and pain to expose the scandal of Black amputations

National Magazine Award winner Lizzie Presser documents the discrimination that leaves Black diabetes patients without easy and affordable care
September 15, 2021
An editor annotates her own column from 20 years ago about Sept. 11

An editor annotates her own column from 20 years ago about Sept. 11

On Saturday, the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, I was listening to coverage on NPR and wonder whether there was anything meaningful I could say on…
September 14, 2021
Tracking shards of grief for 20 years, and daring to love your story subjects

Tracking shards of grief for 20 years, and daring to love your story subjects

Jennifer Senior of The Atlantic goes on a quest to find what a friend lost to 9/11 left behind, and delivers a meditation on love and grief
September 10, 2021