Strictly Q&A

A self-made freelance career (with a little help along the way)

A self-made freelance career (with a little help along the way)

EDITOR’S NOTE: We came across this interview with freelance journalist Barry Yeoman on the Creatives in Conversation site, run by Allison Kirkland, and are so glad we did.  Because now…
August 29, 2019
Allison Kirkland
Reclaiming history with jars of dirt, and building stories from the ground up

Reclaiming history with jars of dirt, and building stories from the ground up

EDITOR’S NOTE: Four hundred years ago, a Portugueses ship landed at a port in Virginia. Its cargo was “20 and odd” humans — the survivors of a horrendous crossing from…
August 23, 2019
Kim Cross
14 hours from event to post: Delivering narrative with context on deadline

14 hours from event to post: Delivering narrative with context on deadline

Since 2015, Michael Kruse of Politico has written hundreds of thousands of words about Donald J. Trump, plumbing the President’s unorthodox campaign tactics, his dubious finances, his penchant for lawsuits,…
August 6, 2019
Chip Scanlan
A hitchhiker's guide to a galaxy of stories

A hitchhiker’s guide to a galaxy of stories

Before Michael Paterniti published some of the most strangely beautiful and empathetic stories of his generation, before he was a contributor to The New York Times Magazine and a correspondent…
July 5, 2019
Andrew Fedorov
An investigative journalist tries his hand at a true crime series for middle schoolers

An investigative journalist tries his hand at a true crime series for middle schoolers

As a reporter, Bryan Denson seems to have done it all — working the police beat, writing longform narratives, teaming up on big investigative features, and producing a nonfiction book.…
July 2, 2019
Jill U. Adams
An amputee runs a grueling ultra-marathon in the desert; a reporting team chases along

An amputee runs a grueling ultra-marathon in the desert; a reporting team chases along

Jeré Longman has almost always been a sports reporter. Aside from a few years in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when he covered Dallas Public Schools for the Dallas…
June 25, 2019
Matt Tullis
A literary take on a hole in the ground

A literary take on a hole in the ground

Faced with nonstop jackhammering, the steady growl and beep of dump trucks, and sickening spirals of dust, residents of a peaceful Manhattan neighborhood searched for ways to take action against…
June 19, 2019
Chip Scanlan
What's in a 50-year-old photo? The lingering gutwrench of the Vietnam War

What’s in a 50-year-old photo? The lingering gutwrench of the Vietnam War

I remember seeing the photo for the first time.It was spring, 1968. I was 17 years old, a high school senior who would register for the draft that coming June.…
May 24, 2019
Steven A. Smith
Grounding apocalyptic issues in reality without losing hope

Grounding apocalyptic issues in reality without losing hope

Look around, look around, at how lucky we are to be alive right now.History is happening. We are changing the world. So sings Eliza Schuyler in “Hamilton,” a magical musical set…
March 21, 2019
Rebecca Boyle
Building a museum with jars of dirt, and building stories from the ground up

Building a museum with jars of dirt, and building stories from the ground up

 One day last October, Cara Solomon sat alone in an empty field in Alabama, the unmarked site of a lynching. She wasn’t carrying a reporter’s notebook or thinking yet about…
February 26, 2019
Kim Cross