Short Takes

Pinned: Elizabeth Kolbert, Gillian Blake, Todd C. Frankel, John Jeremiah Sullivan, storytellers in trouble, a healing cruise and two schools of cliches

Pinned: Elizabeth Kolbert, Gillian Blake, Todd C. Frankel, John Jeremiah Sullivan, storytellers in trouble, a healing cruise and two schools of cliches

For your weekend reading pleasure, items from our Pinterest boards …Recommended Reading:A news photographer, a layoff, a death, and then things got even worse. From the John Woodrow Cox’s short…
March 7, 2014
Paige Williams
What we're reading: Narratives on the Boston Marathon bombing and a tunnel tragedy + essays on empathy and religion + smartphone photos as a reporting tool + the future of digital longform

What we’re reading: Narratives on the Boston Marathon bombing and a tunnel tragedy + essays on empathy and religion + smartphone photos as a reporting tool + the future of digital longform

What we’re reading, in the world of narrative journalism, essays and academia:Long Mile Home: Boston Under Attack, the City’s Courageous Recovery, and the Epic Hunt for Justice, by Scott Helman…
March 6, 2014
Paige Williams

So here’s where we are with the longform “fetish” question

The Grantland/”Dr. V’s Magical Putter” controversy morphed into a debate today over the nature and value of longform after the New York Times‘ Jonathan Mahler argued, in an op-ed, that…
January 25, 2014
Paige Williams
Pinned: Quests edition

Pinned: Quests edition

We’ve got a few new additions to our Tip Sheets board (“Telling Big Stories,” inside the narrative machine with Matter) and Narrative News (“A Founder of Twitter Goes Long,” plus…
November 15, 2013
Paige Williams
What they're tweeting: oral histories

What they’re tweeting: oral histories

Twitter breeds all kinds of storytelling conversation starters, and we’ve started rounding them up. Texas Monthly’s Pamela Colloff tweeted for recommendations on crime writing and empathy a couple of weeks…
November 14, 2013
Paige Williams
The Storyboard shortlist on Veterans Day

The Storyboard shortlist on Veterans Day

Some of the recommended Veterans Day reading that’s turning up on Twitter today, plus a few other Storyboard favorites:“The bugle that sounded the end of the first World War,” by…
November 11, 2013
Paige Williams
Pinned: The danger edition

Pinned: The danger edition

New to our Pinterest page of storytelling wonders: mosquitoes, BASE jumpers, war crimes, gas leaks, cadavers, white noise, a self-policing ex-NFL player and the “problem” with narrative interactivity.From Recommended Reading:In…
November 8, 2013
Paige Williams
The Storyboard shortlist on crime writing and empathy

The Storyboard shortlist on crime writing and empathy

Texas Monthly’s Pamela Colloff tweeted the following yesterday morning:This reminded us of an NYU course that Ted Conover has taught, called “The Journalism of Empathy,” in which graduate students are…
October 30, 2013
Paige Williams

The intersection of “Breaking Bad,” Marty Robbins and “El Paso”

In the first scene of the last episode of “Breaking Bad,” Walter White opens the glove box of a car he’s trying to steal and the case to a Marty…
October 29, 2013
Tommy Tomlinson
Pinned: Med students, firefighters, hoop dreams, an orphan in search of a family and a family in search of justice

Pinned: Med students, firefighters, hoop dreams, an orphan in search of a family and a family in search of justice

Today’s theme: courage. Pinned, for your storytelling pleasure, we’ve got stories in several shades of bravery, by talented narrative journalists from Kansas City, Milwaukee, Boston, New York, Tampa and Washington,…
October 18, 2013
Paige Williams