With Thanksgiving upon us, families across America will gather around tables laden with roast turkey and pumpkin pie. Or not. During the Trump era, squabbles over politics disrupted a holiday that is more about togetherness than religion or gifts. Read more
The news just never takes a rest, does it? Or maybe it’s a variation on the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon, aka frequency bias: Once you’ve tapped into a certain story, related stories or follow-ups catch your attention. Of course, there’s also … Read more
Writing, at its best, is a visual art. It makes readers see. It paints scenes and action and characters in their minds. Brain science studies indicate that people actually hear when they read, which means those old editor scolds … Read more
A few words on social media. I’m not going to get mired in the meta-mess that is Meta, the New&Never Improved Facebook. That’s well-trod territory. I admire and envy friends — known and cyber — who swear off. (Although … Read more
I love a good nut graph. After a meaty description of a scene or complex idea that pulls me into a story, my brain wants to know why I just read those paragraphs. The nut graph tells the reader … Read more
In late August, Jim Tankersley, a White House correspondent for The New York Times, learned he was going to be the pool reporter following President Biden to Dover Air Force Base for the arrival of the … Read more
With the summer of 2021 drawing to an end, Mike Wilson, the deputy sports editor in charge of enterprise and investigations at The New York Times, wanted to celebrate the season (it seemed COVID might be … Read more
It was while listening to a Tamil story on Spotify that the thought occurred to me: Listening to stories in vernacular Indian languages had changed my writing. Some of the influence came from the cadences of speech. Some came … Read more
Stories about grief can shape themselves into as many forms as grief itself. And when grief is multiplied by several people and 20 years, it splinters and reforms again and again. After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, people found … Read more
EDITOR’S NOTE: This post was published in partnership with our friends at the Poynter Institute. As the 20th anniversary of Sept. 11 looms, I am reminded of one of my favorite anthologies of journalism: … Read more
