The son of Italian immigrants grew up in a house where there were virtually no books. In the small, World War II-era town of Ocean City, N.J., Gay Talese spent afternoons listening to plump ladies with deep pockets tell stories … Read more
Journalists are told to write short for the Web. The online audience wants information, not a lovely phrase or a rousing metaphor. “On the Web, people want to move quickly,” says Hoa Loranger, quoted on a video for a Web … Read more
Treme’s Wendell Pierce Sunday night’s Treme debut found a companion in Monday morning’s Times-Picayune: “HBO’s Treme Explained.” The New Orleans paper will offer a weekly encyclopedic post … Read more
After years spent thinking he would become a novelist, David Grann turned to nonfiction, realizing that if he found intriguing characters and situations in real life, he “simply had to excavate them and tell them in a compelling way.” He has … Read more
Yesterday, we highlighted a Sports Illustrated story about the lone goal from a U.S.-England World Cup match in 1950 and the tragic disappearance of the man who scored it. Today, we hear from Alexander Wolff, who wrote the article. If writing … Read more
When Las Vegas Sun staffer Scott Den Herder saw Tony McDew at an area nightclub last year, he could tell by McDew’s “outrageous” 1980s outfit and high-top fade haircut that he’d make an interesting character in a story. What he … Read more
[We recently met Benjamin Chesterton at the Frontline/ICP symposium, where he participated in a discussion on the future of visual narrative. He had some strong opinions about photojournalists and storytelling, and we thought our readers would be interested in hearing his ideas. Read more
When it comes to wildlife narratives, writer Bryan Christy wants more accountability from reporters. Christy wrote us in response to our Friday issue of the Narrative Digest, which featured coverage of a zoo, a history of animal experimentation, and an essay on a vet … Read more
We talked by phone last week with Lu Olkowski, a contributing producer with public radio’s Studio 360 and co-creator of our latest Notable Narrative, “Women of Troy.” Here, Olkowski describes how the Troy story came together and looks at its parent … Read more
When people talk about journalism tottering off into quaint irrelevance, there is a tendency to compare journalism to poetry. In a post this week at PBS Idea Lab, Spot.Us founder David Cohn considers whether journalism, like poetry, might not be … Read more