Short Takes

What we’re watching: newspapers go documentary

It used to be that long-form newspaper narratives were, well, printed on newspaper. These days, long-form is taking on another meaning. Our latest installment of “what we’re watching” includes two…
January 12, 2011
Andrea Pitzer

Narrative on deadline: stories on the shooting of Representative Gabrielle Giffords

Doing narrative stories on the heels of breaking news generally precludes the kind of lyricism often associated with the best examples of the form. Yet it can be a good…
January 10, 2011
Andrea Pitzer
Nonny de la Peña on "Gone Gitmo," Stroome and the future of interactive storytelling

Nonny de la Peña on "Gone Gitmo," Stroome and the future of interactive storytelling

I recently talked about journalism and storytelling with Nonny de la Peña, who is a senior research fellow in immersive journalism at the University of Southern California Annenberg School for Communications…
January 3, 2011
Ernesto Priego

What we're reading: gay culture in the Middle East, stories for a body held hostage, and an athlete dying young

Our latest “what we’re reading” draws on the stalwart print newspapers and magazines that have carried the banner of long-form narrative for so long. From a 5-part investigation of a…
December 2, 2010
Andrea Pitzer

What we’re watching: the costs of heaven, veterans who seek shelter from war, and work from NPPA and College Photographer of the Year contests

For our latest installment, we were taken with some recent contest winners, including a documentary about a group of adult men with autism and their 65-year-old caretaker, who wants to…
November 16, 2010
Andrea Pitzer

What we’re reading: novelists do nonfiction, a witness recants, and two friends jump into the Charles River

Today, we set aside election reporting (which we’ll return to soon) in order to gin up some reading for your Thursday anxieties: dubious conviction and cultural claustrophobia, not to mention…
November 5, 2010
Andrea Pitzer

What we’re watching: used car sales’ Big Vinny, artists living in uncertain times, and the true price of a dowry

Great visuals can inspire storytellers, even when they’re employed for other ends. Below are a collection of beautiful photos and video used in intriguing ways to evoke a way of…
October 12, 2010
Andrea Pitzer
Nobel Prize site offers multimedia smorgasbord; winner Mario Vargas Llosa shows fidelity to print newspapers

Nobel Prize site offers multimedia smorgasbord; winner Mario Vargas Llosa shows fidelity to print newspapers

Photo: Daniele DevotiThe Nobel Prize website has gone cutting edge, or at least modern. Visitors can, for instance, watch Nobel webcasts on a YouTube channel or Tweet greetings to the…
October 7, 2010
Andrea Pitzer

What we’re reading, in which we contemplate a hit-and-run fatality, the death of Glenn Beck’s mother and the declining lethality of quicksand

One of the things about stories is that for them to be interesting, something usually goes wrong. As a result, a large number of the articles, profiles and essays we…
September 30, 2010
Andrea Pitzer
What we’re watching: in which a battalion deploys, Ramadan ends, and a drawing unfolds to illustrate an argument

What we’re watching: in which a battalion deploys, Ramadan ends, and a drawing unfolds to illustrate an argument

Perhaps it’s just the nippy fall weather descending, but we have a multiplicity of crowdsourced, interactive and on-the-horizon projects. So, depending on your constitution, here are some nuggets of future-of-journalism…
September 24, 2010
Andrea Pitzer