Personal Essays

The director wasn’t satisfied.“Do it again,” she said, after we finished the scene.We did.“Do it again.”We did.“Do it again.”And so on, until we got it right. Or close enough.It was…

EDITOR’S NOTE: This week, in honor of Pride Month, we feature three posts about transgender issues. Read how Lane DeGregory of the Tampa Bay Times handled a profile in 2002,…

My daughter Zara, who just turned 9, attended her first reporting interview as an infant, napping next to my chest in a snuggly baby wrap tied around my waist.Traci Angel,…

First, the COVID lockdown. Then retirement.After nearly 40 years as a news professional and 10 as a journalism professor at the University of Idaho, I found myself isolated and bored.…

I didn’t make any New Year’s resolutions this year. However, I did launch a new morning routine.Every morning I get up, make coffee, get the woodstove going, sit in my…

EDITOR’S NOTE: Cathy Henkel, a retired newspaper reporter and editor from Seattle, was wintering on the west coast of Mexico when borders closed because of COVID. She turned a hobby…

The pop culture portrayal of reporters in movies and TV mirrors and shapes public perception of the press

Fred introduced me to Jerry Jeff Walker — by that, I mean that Fred sent me home, from the Lone Star State, with two purple CDs, one of which shimmered…

I’ve been struggling to find the right term for the nonfiction writing I most admire. Whether written by Joan Didion, David Grann, Susan Orlean, Héctor Tobar, Isabel Wilkerson, or Gene…

I was re-reading an old essay of mine that I’d sent out nine times but could never sell. As I finished it, I thought, “Damn, I like this essay. Why…