In our latest Notable Narrative, “The Boy Who Died of Football,” Sports Illustrated senior writer Thomas Lake takes on the collapse of high school football player Max Gilpin during team practice in Louisville, Kentucky, in 2008. Gilpin’s subsequent death … Read more
Last week, The New Republic began posting “online cover stories” on its website. Announcing the move, the magazine’s new editor, Richard Just, wrote about his belief that “beautifully crafted, methodically edited, intellectually rich long-form writing can also thrive … Read more
When I first read the New Journalism manifestos by Tom Wolfe in the late 1970s, they changed forever my vision of narrative. In spite of my Ph.D. in English, I realized for the first time that a narrative had parts … Read more
Earlier this week, we announced a new offering on Storyboard – an Editors’ Roundtable, in which a stellar group of editors will collectively analyze a piece of narrative journalism. We invited Storyboard readers to submit links to the best true story … Read more
Was one of your resolutions in 2011 to become a better storyteller? If so, here are a few conferences and workshops slated for the coming months that can probably teach you a thing or two. These sessions range from one-day … Read more
After three weeks of ice, you’ve watched every “Law & Order” spinoff in syndication from inside your snow fort. The long weekend is over, and you’re looking out the window through a mountain of empty Cheez-It boxes and powdered doughnut wrappers. Read more
In a bit of serendipitous surfing last fall, I stumbled onto “What Happened Here?” a presentation by Harvey Smith and Matthias Worch at the 2010 Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. The … Read more
It used to be that long-form newspaper narratives were, well, printed on newspaper. These days, long-form is taking on another meaning. Our latest installment of “what we’re watching” includes two video documentary projects from newspapers, as well as a number … Read more
Doing narrative stories on the heels of breaking news generally precludes the kind of lyricism often associated with the best examples of the form. Yet it can be a good way to get a framework established on a confusing story … Read more
We talked this week with Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporters Kathleen Gallagher and Mark Johnson about their recent project “One in a Billion,” our latest Notable Narrative. The three-day serial tells the story of Nicholas Volker, a 4-year-old boy … Read more
