Mother Jones is known for its hard-hitting investigations, like Shane Bauer’s 35,000-word undercover account of working as a private prison guard in Louisiana, which won a National Magazine Award for reporting last year. The Pitch In an occasional series, … Read more
You might not think of consumer columnists as narrative storytellers, or investigative reporters. But journalist Dave Lieber, “The Watchdog” for the Dallas Morning News, is a big fan of the creative-writing techniques of the New Journalism movement of the … Read more
As a senior editor commissioning science features for Smithsonian Magazine, Jennie Rothenberg Gritz gets tons of freelance queries. Yet few cold pitches result in an article. Why not? The Pitch In an occasional series, Storyboard examines the elusive art of … Read more
One of my earliest childhood memories was having cash in my hand and roaming a baqala, or a corner store, in my Middle Eastern hometown. I remember the South Asian employee who patiently watched me decide which treat to buy … Read more
Some people are made for what they do. Steph Curry was made to play basketball. Dave Chappelle to deliver jokes. You get that feeling with Kent Russell and his writing. He makes the difficult appear effortless. Don’t believe me? Why … Read more
Six years is a long time to be away from cyberspace—especially when you’re known as the Blogfather. At one point, 20,000 visitors came to Iranian blogger Hossein Derakhshan’s site every day. Words, it turns out, mattered – too much, … Read more
Anna Mae McNeil stares past the camera, the smudge of an old bruise under her right eye. The words “New Castle, Pa., No. 220” are written in white ink below her face. It is Feb. 5, 1933, and Anna … Read more
Some writers work for decades before one of their pieces gets widespread attention. Ron Rosenbaum managed to pull it off with his second long-form magazine article. Rosenbaum’s 1971 Esquire piece, “Secrets of the Little Blue Box,” tells the story of … Read more
Last week on Storyboard, I chatted with Brian Kevin of Down East magazine about a wonderful story that ran in the Maine-based publication last year. He talked about the constant juggling — I’m picturing five balls in the air, … Read more
Longform specialist Jeff Maysh has a penchant for telling genre-breaking stories about people with secret lives. There’s the mom who assumed her daughter’s identity to return to high school; the Michigan farmer who made millions smuggling rare Pez dispensers into … Read more
