It was the kind of tweet a lot of people would thumb past with no more than a quick “like.” But when Jaweed Kaleem read about a one-woman Black Lives Matter protest in small-town America during this past raw-nerved … Read more
With transportation stymied by a pandemic, Wright Thompson couldn’t exactly hop on a plane to research a story on Michael Jordan. Instead, the ESPN senior reporter built a time machine, one interview at a time. The resulting story is … Read more
Josh Sanburn went deep into a place of death — and found a story that teems with life. In “The Last of the First Responders,” published in June in Vanity Fair, Sanburn and … Read more
The street actions rolling through American cities have aimed a spotlight on police. Sometimes the light is harsh: police seen as militarized enforcers who act with impunity in a culture of racism. Sometimes the light fragments, and reveals complex … Read more
At first glance, there are few frills or fireworks in “Tatiana’s Luck,” Hannah Dreier ‘s profile of an immigrant living in a crowded New Jersey house stalked by COVID-19. In the … Read more
When looking for advice, writers shouldn’t be picky; sometimes even a fictional cannibal will serve. When NBC aired a series about Hannibal Lecter, the psychiatrist who moonlights as a serial killer — or maybe it’s the other way around … Read more
With a cell phone, an eye for evocative detail and 50 pages of notes, Brittny Mejia of the Los Angeles Times turned a day at a grocery store into a portrait of a community challenged and changed by … Read more
Surprising stories spring from any number of places. Investigative or narrative or explanatory stories often start with curiosity sparked by a local news story or feature. That’s what happened when an editor at Slate read a story in a … Read more
Julia Rosen has probed the myths of America’s deepest lake, looked down on Prince William Sound from a floatplane and joined a quest to scour the Bronx … Read more
When Dashka Slater looked at California’s parole system, she saw more than a sprawling bureaucracy; she saw a place where people struggled toward redemption. When she followed those seeking parole, the journalist and author found more than crimes and … Read more
