At last weekend’s American Association of Sunday and Feature Editors conference, keynote speaker Shawn Levy spoke about "getting the story" and the connections between writing books and journalism. The film critic at The Oregonian, Levy has written five books, including King of Comedy, about comedian Jerry Lewis, and his most recent biography—Paul Newman: A Life. In addition to his work at The Oregonian, he blogs about film and professional soccer, and tweets compusively, suffering from what he calls “monkey brain.”
Levy suggested reporters should “look high, look low, and look sideways” when researching, and he praised the investigative reporters who taught him how to dig for a story. He talked about the “high”—academic institutions and libraries that offer arcane documents and details. He connected the “low” with tabloid accounts and stories on a subject, and the concept of looking “sideways” with looking for what else was happening in the life and community of a subject at any given point in his life.
Read more from his talk. Read more
Excerpts from a September 2009 interview with Chris Jones on “The End of Mystery,” in which a team of investigators recovers bodies and determines the cause of a helicopter crash off … Read more
Excerpts from an August 2009 interview with Michael J. Mooney, reporter for Florida’s New Times, whose stories won a slot in the Best American Crime Reporting and Best American Sports Writing anthologies for 2009: When did you first get interested … Read more
Excerpts from a July 2009 interview with Steve Luxenberg on his memoir, which traces the discovery that his mother had an institutionalized sister whose existence she kept secret from her children for more than half a century: How long did you spend … Read more
“The Girl in the Window” is the story of Dani, a child so removed from normal human community she has been labeled “feral.” In this St. Petersburg Times piece, Lane DeGregory walks along a delicate tightrope, exploring an abused child’s … Read more
[Editor’s Note: These comments are adapted from a talk given by Michael Pollan at the 2006 Nieman Conference on Narrative Journalism.] Book by book, project by project, it’s usually hard to say who you are as a writer or what … Read more
This is an excerpt from “The Guinea Pig Doctors,” a book by Jon Franklin and John Sutherland about eight doctors who experimented on themselves in pursuit of knowledge. In this chapter John Paul Stapp gets strapped into a rocket sled … Read more
[Editor’s note: This essay first appeared on transom.org, “a showcase and resource for new public radio.”] Dear Transomistas, It was daunting to have Jay Allison’s invitation to be a guest on Transom.org, because I’m no insider to radio production. I … Read more
This piece is a good example of how to write about emotional topics without mawkishness or sentimentality. A woman has lost her husband; she must now face the challenges of hanging onto her farm and caring for her young son. Read more
For an ambitious young reporter who loved writing stories, it sounded like the assignment of a lifetime. My editor, Joel Rawson, wanted daily narratives for the front page of The Providence Journal. The idea also seemed impossible. I’d written narratives … Read more
