Story Craft

Here is a self-editing origin story:I was back from my first truly big reporting assignment, which was to cover the 1984-85 famine in the sub-Sahara. I was exhausted, emotional about…

The behemoth of Twitter has been a game-changer for journalism. It has become a tool for breaking stories, making — or breaking — careers, calling attention to issues, and giving…

For many Americans, COVID news has joined the thrum of everyday life. But Charles Pierce warned readers in a recent newsletter the crisis shouldn’t be allowed to be part of…

An author and essayist listens to stories in in their native tongues to hear new rhythms, phrasing and metaphor

Writing scholar Roy Peter Clark reprises a cousin's escape story, and finds lessons for writers who help people recount personal stories

How do you write about a shared event that changes the world, but that we each experience personally? And how do you then share that personal experience back to the…

In “The Art of Description: World into Word,” Mark Doty writes that Proust endeavored to “dilate the sentence toward its outer limit, so that one would feel the blur of…

"Why does this story need to be told here, in this community? And why does this story need to be told now?" says ProPublica’s managing editor for local

A good pitch is not a scattershot, but a clearly stated central idea or question that is fresh, relevant, and a fit for the publication

“If you know what you want to say, you’ll figure out how to say it.”That’s what Steve Padilla, editor of Column One at the Los Angeles Times, told a virtual…