Dear Reader, As the holiday weekend approached, a newspaper friend asked me why, as editor of a community newspaper, I reprinted the editorial “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus” on Christmas day every year for 15 years. Usually … Read more
EDITOR’S NOTE: The below note came to us from Cathy Grimes, a Nieman Fellow alum and faithful Storyboard reader. She said it was prompted by recent posts in which other writers wrote of being inspired by everything from … Read more
Roy Peter Clark EDITOR’S NOTE: In the spirit of the giving season, the Poynter Institute gave us permission to use this piece (first published by Poynter Dec. Read more
The first sentence is treacherous: This is how I die. It stands alone, in italics – first person, no quote marks. It reads like an epitaph beneath a photograph of six people huddled close – some wearing breathing … Read more
When I first saw Pop-Up Magazine in San Francisco a couple of years ago, I struggled to describe the experience to friends. What do you call a show where you might watch a singer in drag … Read more
As a newish multiplatform editor at The Washington Post, I’m always looking for help writing great headlines. My mind isn’t naturally filled with puns, I haven’t read reams of poetry and my musical tastes tend to run to classical, … Read more
In a full-circle illustration of the way life sometimes imitates art, screenwriting led Sarah Berns to smokejumping. Then smokejumping led to a cinematic memoir, written with a director’s eye and the architecture of a screenplay. “When I went to … Read more
If this choice for One Great Sentence seems odd, rest assured we’re not going to go all holiday sappy on you. That’s what the Hallmark holiday movie channels are for. Instead, when this line zipped by in my annual … Read more
One honey-glazed autumn afternoon, I watched a tangle of fifth-graders playing Capture the Flag in a park in Boise, Idaho. Their favorite soundtrack blared in the background: Alexander Hamilton. My name is Alexander Hamilton. And there’s a million … Read more
