With high-profile stories in The Washington Post and The New York Times reporting that Russia tampered with the U.S. presidential election and Twitter ablaze with references to “The Manchurian Candidate” (one of my favorite movies), it seemed … Read more
Just in time for the weekend, here’s a little list of some of the things I’ve been listening to and reading this week, some of it online — Storyboard included, natch — and some of it on vinyl or actual … Read more
When I worked at the Los Angeles Times, one of the things that made me the proudest of the newspaper was its commitment to covering every killing in L.A. County with its Homicide Report. In the face of a … Read more
You don’t have to be a “Hamilton” groupie to love this wonderful interview that Nieman Foundation Curator Ann Marie Lipinski did recently with the blockbuster play’s creator, Lin-Manuel Miranda. Read more
I just got off the plane from the Republican National Convention with a bulletproof vest still packed in my suitcase, and I have to wonder if last week would have made Hunter S. Thompson lose his mind. Before the convention, … Read more
Forty-six minutes into Episode 4 of Ezra Edelman’s epic documentary “O.J. Simpson: Made in America,” the director squares off with Barry Scheck, the defense attorney who discredited–or, at the very least, undermined–the State of California’s DNA evidence tying Simpson … Read more
Sarah Schweitzer has spent almost two decades honing her narrative instincts at The Boston Globe and the St. Petersburg Times. In April 2015 she was acknowledged by the Pulitzer Prize committee, which named her story “Chasing Bayla” a … Read more
Elizabeth Weil had never written about criminal justice, but when asked to write about a controversial case of whether a baby was killed by his father, she produced the gripping “What Really Happened to Baby Johan?” Her … Read more
A good story transports its audience to the scene of the action. The classics of narrative nonfiction are memorable because they find the words that put the reader in the author’s shoes, witnessing the key moments as they unfold—think of … Read more
You’re standing in the middle of an eerily empty two-lane road. Cookie-cutter apartment complexes surround you. Broad-leaved trees line the street. It looks like an average American suburb, but something’s not right. You look left, then right. Yellow … Read more
