Editor’s note: We’re looking at the never-ending debate over what is called, in journalese, the “nut graf” — that so-what paragraph or section that pulls out of the news or narrative to provide context and significance. In earlier posts, veteran … Read more
Editor’s note: We’re looking at the never-ending debate over what is called, in journalese, the “nut graf” — that so-what paragraph or section that pulls out of the news or narrative to provide context and significance. In an earlier post, veteran … Read more
In Part 2 of our annotation of Amy Ellis Nutt‘s Pulitzer-winning “The Wreck of the Lady Mary,” Nutt, of the Newark Star-Ledger, explains how the investigative track of her five-chapter narrative unfolded. Yesterday, in Part 1, she walked … Read more
This is the third in an occasional series of line-by-lines with narrative writers and their work, adapted from a project called Annotation Tuesday! on Tumblr. Earlier, we featured the Tampa Bay Times‘ Michael Kruse and his story about a woman who … 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 Chip Scanlan The best storytellers are driven by an insatiable need to know. Give them a mystery and they will dedicate themselves to trying to solve it. That relentless inquisitiveness propelled John Branch of The … Read more
By Carly Stern Imagine that you’ve reached your long-held journalism dreams. You worked your way to the staff of a big masthead newspaper. Then you moved beyond the breakneck pace and tight word-count limits of that world to the … Read more
By Jacqui Banaszynski Context is a core to good reporting, especially when current events are informed by history, law, geopolitics, culture, economics or the many other things that complicate modern life. A singular moment is seldom that. Context can, … Read more
By Chip Scanlan When Thomas Curwen of the Los Angeles Times decided to write about mental health care in California through the lens of one patient, he faced a daunting challenge: tracking the erratic chronology of … Read more
We interrupt your syllabus prep with this important message: Consider Nieman Storyboard as a resource – and even publication destination – in your reporting, writing and journalism ethics courses. Storyboard is a trove of what I call “story work.” … Read more