We admired this piece in part for the way Fassihi’s use of the first person opened up her writing: She didn’t try to squeeze her insights within the more rigid conventions of standard reporting. The transparency of the piece, then—her … Read more
What is your advice on structuring a story while reporting? You report for structure the same way you report for anything else. When you’re reporting for dramatic narrative, you’re reporting for character, meaning and structure at the same time. What … Read more
Hallman spent hundreds of hours and more than 10 months reporting for this series, about a disfigured young boy in Oregon. He says he did very little reconstruction, that most of the scenes are based on his observation. We admire … Read more
Suskind won a 1995 Pulitzer for feature writing for this story and its sequel. He later published a book: “A Hope in the Unseen: An American Odyssey from the Inner City to the Ivy League.” His story’s protagonist, Cedric, is … Read more
Journalists should report the truth. Who would deny it? But such a statement does not get us far enough, for it fails to distinguish nonfiction from other forms of expression. Novelists can reveal great truths about the human condition, and … Read more
Editor’s Note: This is an edited transcript of comments made by Gay Talese at the Nieman Narrative Journalism Conference at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., on Dec. 1, 2001. It was first published in the Spring 2002 issue of RiverTeeth. Read more
Note: The following is an edited transcript of a talk by Jim Collins at the 2001 Nieman Conference on Narrative Journalism. It was published in the Spring 2002 issue of Nieman Reports. These are things I have learned from my … Read more
Editor’s Note: This essay originally appeared in the Fall 2000 issue of Nieman Reports, the Nieman Foundation’s quarterly magazine. Narrative writing is returning to newspapers. No one has added up the reallocated column-inches to quantify this change, but there are … Read more
Think of the great characters from fiction. Gustave Flaubert’s romantic and unfocused Emma Bovary. Mark Twain’s spunky Huck Finn. Larry McMurtry’s lusty Gus McCrae. Margaret Mitchell’s willful Scarlett O’Hara. Each is memorable because each is a whole person, … Read more
This essay is based on presentations given in advanced feature writing seminars the author taught at The Washington Post. On Thinking About Intimate Journalism It’s the kiss of death for anyone aspiring to do intimate journalism to think … Read more
