“The White Lotus” scorches like burning sand on bare feet. A satire about wealthy white tourists in Hawaii and a mysterious death that springs from their visit, the HBO series poses spiky challenges to viewers and critics grappling with … Read more
Peter Hessler’s books about China have resonated with both Western and Chinese audiences, an accomplishment that seems unlikely today, when the “China story” has become a political and diplomatic battleground. Hessler is the China correspondent for the New … Read more
The director wasn’t satisfied. “Do it again,” she said, after we finished the scene. We did. “Do it again.” We did. “Do it again.” And so on, until we got it right. Or close enough. It was my first … Read more
Mitchell S. Jackson was worried. It was May 2020, and he had just sent his agent the prologue of his latest novel. Jackson, a contributing writer for Esquire and author of two celebrated books, said to himself, “I really … Read more
Meet Bethany Grace Howe, above. I met her a little over 10 years ago when she came to the Missouri School of Journalism as a nontraditional graduate student. “Nontraditional” essentially meant that she was older than most of her … Read more
EDITOR’S NOTE: This week, in recognition of Pride Month, we feature three posts about coverage of transgender people or issues. See how Lane DeGregory of the Tampa Bay Times handled a profile in 2002, when there were … Read more
Nicholas Britell’s music has infused a lot of film and TV shows recently, from the rich aural landscape of HBO’s “The Underground Railroad” to the unexpected banger that is the “Succession” theme. So when … Read more
EDITOR’S NOTE: Read an annotation of the prologue and first act of This American Life’s “Anatomy of Doubt.” CAUTION: The stories linked to and discussed in this package describe details of sexual assault, which some readers might … Read more
Harried doctors and nurses, gowned in eerie layers, race to the call of codes. Hospital hallways overflow with the near-dead. Undertakers scramble to make space as body after body arrives, and refrigerated trucks are crammed with more, all waiting … Read more
Two foundational definitions of news are proximity and immediacy. The closer and more urgent an event or issue, the more likely it is to grab a reader’s attention. That can make it challenging to draw readers into stories about … Read more
