The image is stark, hypnotic: a road, framed by towering pines, bathed in the blue light of late night or early dawn. The curve of a guardrail and a pickup truck’s headlights blur in the mist. Superimposed over the … Read more
EDITOR’S NOTE: This week, Nieman Reports magazine takes an unflinching look at domestic violence, and at the challenges and imperative of covering for what it is: not a “crime of passion” but a global social crisis. Read more
Journalism that explores “true crime” is booming, in everything from investigative stories to books to gripping TV documentaries. But it can easily risk being exploitative. That cautionary note comes from Pamela Colloff, whose justice … Read more
Smart journalists begin their stories with a simple premise: They know nothing. They recognize that their job is to find out everything they can about a subject, piercing their veil of ignorance and easy assumptions through relentless reporting and … Read more
The news that Herman Wouk, whose epic World War II novels kept him atop the best seller lists for much of his literary career, died May 17 at the age of 103, led me back more than five … Read more
When Elizabeth Weil thought of profiling Max Harris, one of two people facing criminal charges for Oakland’s deadly Ghost Ship fire, she figured another reporter must already be on the story. The fire, which took 36 lives when it … Read more
Before humans learned to write, they documented their lives through images with technologies fashioned from materials at hand. To create the renowned galleries of animals — objects of fascination, dreams of conquest — in the Lascaux Cave, painted … Read more
In her 20 years traveling the world as a freelance writer, Rachel Louise Snyder has covered a hurricane in Honduras, a tsunami in Indonesia, and the forced sterilization of women in Tibet. But no experience abroad … Read more
Walking onto campus one morning in early April, coffee in hand, I approached Indiana University’s iconic Sample Gates. It’s always a spirit-lifting sight, especially with the statue of Ernie Pyle on the periphery. The gates were … Read more
There were two things I knew: I wanted to write a story about how heartburn can kill you, as it did my father, and I wanted to write for Undark, a really cool science magazine that … Read more