Story Annotations

A sex worker plunges to her death and a reporter demands to know: Who was she?

A sex worker plunges to her death and a reporter demands to know: Who was she?

Dan Barry led a team at The New York Times to uncover a name, a life history, and the sinister world of power and exploitation on 40th Road
On trial for the Ghost Ship warehouse fire: Was an accused villain miscast as the bad guy?

On trial for the Ghost Ship warehouse fire: Was an accused villain miscast as the bad guy?

For "In the Ashes of Ghost Ship," Elizabeth Weil saw beyond existing news coverage to explore a story no one else had told
From a caress of love to a fist of fear

From a caress of love to a fist of fear

The New Yorker story "A Raised Hand," by Rachel Louise Snyder, is the foundation of a new book on the scourge of domestic violence
Learning to look up, down, sideways, backwards and beyond while storytelling

Learning to look up, down, sideways, backwards and beyond while storytelling

Storytellers in any medium can learn from those in others. Writers must know how to paint mental images through the hieroglyphics of text, apply (and break) rules of grammar to…
Wired's executive editor seeks stories that reveal all faces of technology

Wired’s executive editor seeks stories that reveal all faces of technology

Rejections aren't personal: “70 percent of why pitches don't work has nothing to do with the writer”
Shining light on a "shadow" special-ed program in the Georgia public schools

Shining light on a “shadow” special-ed program in the Georgia public schools

Rachel Aviv of The New Yorker uses the narrative of one child in one school to reveal the widespread costs of "separate and unequal"
An annotated project that "breaks the 'rules' in all the right ways"

An annotated project that “breaks the ‘rules’ in all the right ways”

EDITOR’S NOTE: While we did not annotate this project by ProPublica Illinois, we are including it in “Annotation Tuesday” because the story itself, as published, was an innovative example of…
How to crack the code of live storytelling with Pop-Up Magazine

How to crack the code of live storytelling with Pop-Up Magazine

"Ephemeral" true stories that inform, surprise and delight
How film class led to fighting wildfires which led to finding a home which led to a memoir

How film class led to fighting wildfires which led to finding a home which led to a memoir

In a full-circle illustration of the way life sometimes imitates art, screenwriting led Sarah Berns to smokejumping. Then smokejumping led to a cinematic memoir, written with a director’s eye and…
Braving the Drake Passage, swimming with leopard seals and interviewing a non-talker

Braving the Drake Passage, swimming with leopard seals and interviewing a non-talker

From the archives: National Geographic writer Craig Welch turns silent subjects into the compelling voices of climate change