Notable Narratives

The writing is snappy and the voice human in this slice-of-life piece about a couple and their fateful courtship. We liked the efficient movement from event to event, the sparing…

This lovely, short narrative essay provides small and interesting details about a region we’re more likely to read about in news articles. The piece is also about how death creeped…

This story seems to have followed a recipe for compelling narrative: Take a heroic figure, add a group of “endangered children, let them struggle against great odds. Fold in current…

Writing an admiring piece about a likable character is sometimes challenging; the story can end up cloying, empty. In this piece Berg uses narrative and concrete evidence to build his…

There’s a lot of engaging subtext in this piece; it’s a deft character study. Meckler writes in plain language but tells a complicated story, of family dynamics and psychological struggles.…

Here’s what Carol Hanner, this series’ editor, wrote us as an introduction to the piece:“The Crossing is the longest series the Denver newspaper has ever done. Reporter Kevin Vaughan, photographer…

According to this series, 29 percent of elderly people who break a hip die within a year. This is higher than the one-year rate of death following a stroke. The…

We liked the focus in this piece on one patient, the very clear narrative and progression from scene to scene. We thought the use of the doctor’s internal soundtrack a…

Usually we want newspaper narratives with highly emotional content to connect with some larger public issue; otherwise they’re so often mawkish, sentimental. But there are also, of course, plenty of…

Shiffman and his editor, Avery Rome, made a very complicated story readable and highly engaging by sticking closely to narrative technique. Read “Drugnet,” by John Shiffman…