As a senior editor commissioning science features for Smithsonian Magazine, Jennie Rothenberg Gritz gets tons of freelance queries. Yet few cold pitches result in an article. Why not? The Pitch In an occasional series, Storyboard examines the elusive art of … Read more
Magazine pitches are an elusive species. You hear talk of them at journalism conferences and in freelancer forums. You see evidence of their existence in the stories they beget. But it’s rare to catch a glimpse of a specimen in … Read more
With fewer staff writers at newspapers and magazines, freelance journalists have more opportunities to take on longform features – both on and offline. Q: What would you tell other freelancers who are reluctant to pitch longer pieces? A: I … Read more
A quote in one of this week’s posts has stuck in my mind. It’s by a former journalist who started a live-storytelling group in Beirut. What she says applies to that form of oral storytelling, but also to literary journalism … Read more
Sitting across a dinner table in Mexico City back in 2009, Nathan Thornburgh and Matt Goulding hatched an idea. Thornburgh, a longtime foreign correspondent for Time magazine, and Goulding, a roving food writer and editor who pioneered the bestselling “Eat … Read more
Thirty years ago, a plane took off in Paraguay and smashed into a mountain in Bolivia. In the decades since, the accident left secrets trapped – and conspiracy theories festering – at the frozen heights of South America. “The … Read more
Rachel Monroe has two journalistic obsessions: crime and utopia. She’s fascinated by how people deal with extreme situations, when the stakes are high and things fall apart. The two aren’t even so different, she observes: “Utopia always contains within it … Read more
Every once in a while you read a story that feels so authentic and true, you wish you’d written it. That’s how I felt reading Jon Mooallem’s New York Times Magazine piece about a self-professed “idler” named Gavin Pretor-Pinney … Read more
Ashley Powers spent the first decade of her career at the Los Angeles Times, working her way up from intern to breaking news reporter to national correspondent. When she left the Times in 2014 to move with her husband to … Read more
Science presents particular challenges for narrative writers, like deciphering the often arcane language of scientific studies, or coaxing pithy quotes from scientists accustomed to speaking in academicese, and wary of having their work misinterpreted. Then there’s the usual daunting exercise … Read more