My morning NPR ritual recently brought back two major landmarks in my journalism career this past week. May 18 was both the 41st anniversary of the eruption of Mount St. Helens and the 40th anniversary of the first newspaper … Read more
If you have read the novels of Dennis Lehane (among them “Gone, Baby, Gone,” “Mystic River” and “Shutter Island,” all made into movies), you know that place is a powerful character, even a protagonist, in his … Read more
Harried doctors and nurses, gowned in eerie layers, race to the call of codes. Hospital hallways overflow with the near-dead. Undertakers scramble to make space as body after body arrives, and refrigerated trucks are crammed with more, all waiting … Read more
I spent the early years of my journalism career struggling with pretty much everything about the job, but especially with the writing. The reporting was often uncomfortable as I pushed past my mother’s three cardinal rules, all variations on … Read more
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the last episode in our five-part video series, “Field Testing,” in which independent video producer Alexander Trowbridge retreats to a farm to learn the tools and skills necessary for anyone to make compelling visual stories … Read more
My daughter Zara, who just turned 9, attended her first reporting interview as an infant, napping next to my chest in a snuggly baby wrap tied around my waist. Read more
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the fourth in our five-part video series, “Field Testing,” in which independent video producer Alexander Trowbridge retreats to a farm to learn the tools and … Read more
Two foundational definitions of news are proximity and immediacy. The closer and more urgent an event or issue, the more likely it is to grab a reader’s attention. That can make it challenging to draw readers into stories about … Read more
Lizzie Johnson’s work covering the deadly wildfires that have scorched California in recent years has earned a place in these posts in the past. Most notable was an annotation of a piece for the San Francisco Chronicle in which … Read more
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the third in our five-part video series, Field Testing, in which independent video producer Alexander Trowbridge retreats to a farm to learn the tools and … Read more
