The opening paragraph of Rebecca Solnit’s new LitHub essay, “Why the President Must Be Impeached,” is a single sentence, 88 words long. It is one of the shortest paragraphs in a 20-paragraph soliloquy about her take on the … Read more
Why is it so great? The writing in this famous passage is so good that George Orwell wrote a parody of it designed to ridicule the bloated writing of his day: “Objective consideration of contemporary phenomena compels the conclusion that success … Read more
We really looked under the hood of literary journalism this week, with wonderful tips on how to pitch and write your stories. In the second installment of our series “The Pitch,” a Smithsonian Magazine editor talks about her likes and … Read more
When Colin McNulty was developing a podcast about Oprah Winfrey, the producer for WBEZ Chicago found inspiration in an unlikely place: “House of Cards,” the Netflix series about a scheming Washington politician who eventually becomes president of the United States. Read more
Because why not a list of lists? Ten* worth the storyteller’s time: 1) “130 years of must-read stories for digital journalists: five lessons from 1851-1981,” by Abraham Hyatt, editor of the data-driven investigative project Oakland Police Beat. His top … Read more
We’ve configured this year’s Best of Storyboard roundup by category* this year, as opposed to ranking them by readership, though we’ll say that in terms of pageviews the Gay Talese/Elon Green annotation of “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold” walloped … Read more
An interesting writing move recently caught my eye in Rosalind Bentley’s Atlanta Journal-Constitution profile of poet laureate Natasha Trethewey. For lack of a better name, I’ll call it the “narrative overview,” and I now see it everywhere. Read more
Since the first stirrings of the Nieman Foundation’s narrative writing program nearly 20 years ago, the staff has tended a treasure trove of resource material devoted to excellence in journalistic storytelling. Much of that material went online first via the … Read more
@GlobeMoskowitz One of the most riveting stories to emerge from the Boston Marathon bombing coverage was the Boston Globe piece, by Eric Moskowitz, about “Danny,” the young Chinese … Read more
Narrative isn’t synonymous with long-form work. A narrative journalist doesn’t need thousands of words or loads of reporting and writing time to tell a memorable story. For you hunter-gatherers of short-form models, consider: … Read more