By Line Vaaben Much of my shaping as a journalist traces back 25 years, when I covered a deadly fire in Sweden. But it wasn’t until I returned to the scene a quarter-century later that I realized how the … Read more
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the second of ourdispatches from the 2024 Power of Narrative conference at Boston University. For the first post, see deadline narratives by a Wall Street Journal podcast team. By Madeline Bodin How … Read more
By Jacqui Banaszynski Classic news narratives tend to follow a single primary character through a story. There are other characters, of course, including people connected to the main character or more official or expert sources … Read more
By Trevor Pyle When reporter Kavitha Surana and photographer Stacy Kranitz profiled a Tennessee mother forced to endure a life-threatening pregnancy shortly after Roe v. Wade was overturned, they could have let the … Read more
By Chip Scanlan The best narrative writers know they need not just to interview after the fact, but to observe in the moment. They want to be on the scene, where they see characters and action unfold in real … Read more
By Jacqui Banaszynski I try to take notice of writing approaches in all manner of places. As a kid, I read the back of cereal boxes, which probably were promo-style or maybe kid-type stories. I read the “Green Pages” … Read more
By Jacqui Banaszynski A sign of the times… or, to be wordier but more precise, a sign of my obsessed mind in these divisive times in these dis-United States … My closest friend’s husband reads comic strips. He has … Read more
EDITOR’S NOTE: Thomas Gibbons-Neff served with the U.S. Marines in Afghanistan; he now writes for The New York Times, covering the war in Ukraine. Karl Marlantes served with the U.S. Marines in Vietnam; he … Read more
Lizzie Johnson was a young reporter at the San Francisco Chronicle in 2018, covering local and state politics, when the deadliest wildfires in California swept through the region, all but destroying the small town of Paradise. Johnson raised her … Read more
By Jacqui Banaszynski Rotten Tomatoes didn’t think much of “The Da Vinci Code,” the 2006 film adapted from Dan Brown’s best-selling novel of the same name. The movie only rated 25 percent on the Tomatometer; the Critics … Read more