EDITOR’S NOTE: Authentic profiles are among the most rewarding, challenging and essential of journalistic art forms, requiring an alchemy of relationship, grit and elegance. The most successful often involve a bit of self-reflection, as a writer peers into the life … Read more
When Elizabeth Weil thought of profiling Max Harris, one of two people facing criminal charges for Oakland’s deadly Ghost Ship fire, she figured another reporter must already be on the story. The fire, which took 36 lives when it … Read more
Before humans learned to write, they documented their lives through images with technologies fashioned from materials at hand. To create the renowned galleries of animals — objects of fascination, dreams of conquest — in the Lascaux Cave, painted … Read more
In her 20 years traveling the world as a freelance writer, Rachel Louise Snyder has covered a hurricane in Honduras, a tsunami in Indonesia, and the forced sterilization of women in Tibet. But no experience … Read more
Now and again, in the wonderful world of reading, you stumble across a sentence that not only evokes a response or feeling because of what it says, but because of how it says it. This is one of those sentences. Read more
In his “New in Town” standup comedy special, John Mulaney tells how, when he was 10, he was in love with his babysitter, who he thought was much older. But as an adult, he discovered she’d been only 13 at … Read more
Walking onto campus one morning in early April, coffee in hand, I approached Indiana University’s iconic Sample Gates. It’s always a spirit-lifting sight, especially with the statue of Ernie Pyle on the periphery. The gates were … Read more
Modern society works hard to find ways to talk about subjects that have long been taboo, and that left sufferers isolated and shrouded in shame. Things like mental illness, abortion, addiction and even rape are more and more brought … Read more
There were two things I knew: I wanted to write a story about how heartburn can kill you, as it did my father, and I wanted to write for Undark, a really cool science magazine that … Read more
“The Loneliest Polar Bear” wasn’t just a heart-tugging news story. It was a suspenseful, multi-thousand word saga about an abandoned newborn polar bear. It was rationed into five chapters that were published in the print paper and online. It … Read more
