Author

Louise Kiernan

@louisekiernan

Louise Kiernan is an associate professor at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, focusing on narrative, investigative and social issues reporting. She is also co-director of the school's Social Justice News Nexus. She joined Medill in 2010 from the Chicago Tribune, where she worked for 18 years as a reporter and editor, most recently as enterprise editor, managing a team writing in-depth features and coaching staff throughout the newsroom. She won a 2001 Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting as lead writer of a series on air travel and was a finalist in the same category for an individual project. She was a 2005 Nieman Fellow at Harvard University, has served on the Nieman fellowship selection committee, and chaired two Pulitzer Prize juries, for investigative and explanatory reporting.

5 Questions for Jill Lepore

5 Questions for Jill Lepore

No wonder Jill Lepore describes herself as a “code-switcher.” She’s both a prize-winning professor of history at Harvard University and a staff writer for The New Yorker magazine. Her most…
Bringing creativity to complex issues: The Washington Post, New Republic and CIR

Bringing creativity to complex issues: The Washington Post, New Republic and CIR

This week’s 3 for 2 picks highlight recent work that incorporates elements of creative storytelling to examine complex issues, with standout journalism on national security, criminal justice and the environment.…

Best of the best of the best?

Here’s a highly curated list for you. Robert Atwan, the editor of the “Best American Essays” series, has selected for the Publishers Weekly website his top 10 essays since 1950. Atwan…

Pearls before Breakfast, Reprised

Almost anyone who loves narrative journalism or music or social experiments or who simply believes that children are wiser than adults knows the Gene Weingarten story “Pearls Before Breakfast.”In this…

“The problem of being labelled a confessionalist”

If you’ve read Meghan Daum’s terrific essay in the Sept. 29 New Yorker on her decision to remain childless (one of Storyboard’s most recent weekend picks), you’ll want to take a…

Catch up on stories from the New Yorker, Chicago Tribune and NPR

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gs069dndIYkHere are Storyboard’s three picks for your reading, viewing and dancing pleasure this weekend:In an essay entitled “Difference Maker: The childless, the parentless, and the Central Sadness,” Meghan Daum writes in the…
Required Reading, Session Two

Required Reading, Session Two

Welcome to the second session of our discussion with narrative instructors about the stories they’re assigning students this fall. If you missed Monday’s recommendations from Alex Kotlowitz, Doug Foster and…
Required Reading, Session One

Required Reading, Session One

As the academic year gets underway, we decided to ask some top narrative journalism instructors what they’re assigning their students to study this semester and why. There are some tried-and-true…

3 (Stories) for 2 (Days)

It’s time for Storyboard’s three weekend picks. Here they are:In honor of Roger Federer’s gritty performance in Thursday’s U.S. Open quarterfinal, it seems fitting to re-read David Foster Wallace’s 2006…
Registration Open: Narrative Conference at Berkeley

Registration Open: Narrative Conference at Berkeley

Registration is now open for “The Latest in Longform,” the new, small-scale narrative journalism conference at the University of California at Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism. Organized by former Nieman narrative…