By Carly Stern Alexandra Zayas caught the journalism bug as a kid growing up in Miami, Florida, following some of biggest news events of the time. From there, she earned a journalism degree, spent several years reporting at the … Read more
By Chip Scanlan Legend has it that Tom Wolfe, the New Journalism pioneer whose stories regularly presented his characters’ points of view, was once challenged by a critic who demanded to know how he could possibly know what those … Read more
By Ania Hull Swiss journalist Andreas Babst roams South Asia and the Middle east as a correspondent for the German-language Swiss daily Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ). He lives in India, and when time allows, works on his favorite side … Read more
EDITOR’S NOTE: In this installment of our occasional series on effective editing, we featured a Q&A with Lynda Robinson, an enterprise and narrative editor at the Washington Post, and follow it with this annotation below of a … Read more
By Chip Scanlan Journalists who write profiles don’t go in cold. They pre-report to prepare for crucial interviews. They read widely and research previous stories that have been written about their subject. They think through questions they need to … Read more
EDITOR’S NOTE: In this installment of our occasional series “What Makes a Good Editor,” we featured a Q&A with Mike Wilson of The New York Times “Great Reads” and follow it with his annotation below of a … Read more
By Chip Scanlan The best narrative writers know they need not just to interview after the fact, but to observe in the moment. They want to be on the scene, where they see characters and action unfold in real … Read more
By Chip Scanlan The best storytellers are driven by an insatiable need to know. Give them a mystery and they will dedicate themselves to trying to solve it. That relentless inquisitiveness propelled John Branch of The … Read more
By Chip Scanlan Every beat has its own allure. The dramatic stories of crime, criminals and their victims draw reporters to the cops beat. The best science journalists revel in data, discoveries, evidence and the challenges of determining their … Read more
By Trevor Pyle The world of online influencers — especially those who trade in sexual content — is an economic behemoth that’s often-murky and often-mocked. But Washington Post reporter Drew Harwell used his remarkable story on a pair of … Read more