Nell Lake

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…

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.…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

This account of the 2006 California heat wave that killed 138 people cruises on the drama of the event, focusing on one man who died soon after driving his tractor…

Our “mawkishness meter” went pretty high on this story, but we’re curmudgeons. It’s an effective, intimate story of devotion and faith. The two-part series was published on Christmas eve and…