The clipping is yellowed, a relic from 33 years ago when I was a journalism grad student and so wowed by a story that I cut it out of the newspaper for inspiration. The article chronicled the last moments of … Read more
Jessica Weisberg believes that narrative journalism is heading toward a post-platform world where reporters pick the right medium for each story. If that’s the case, she’s been training for the role of Renaissance woman. After starting out as a fact … Read more
Rachel Monroe has two journalistic obsessions: crime and utopia. She’s fascinated by how people deal with extreme situations, when the stakes are high and things fall apart. The two aren’t even so different, she observes: “Utopia always contains within it … Read more
Recently, Brooke Jarvis’ byline has seemed to pop up everywhere. I opened “Love and Ruin,” a new anthology of stories from The Atavist, to find a piece on her year working with leprosy patients in Hawaii. In January, Harper’s … Read more
Just when you think Bigfoot has been analyzed, merchandized and satirized ad nauseam, along comes journalist Leah Sottile and an octogenarian rodeo cowboy named Bob Gimlin, galloping out of the Pacific Northwest with a take you probably haven’t heard before. Read more
Like a lot of people “from away” with a stake in Maine, I’ve been reading Down East magazine for several years now. It was a comfort read, something that connected me to the state. It took awhile to notice that … Read more
Longform specialist Jeff Maysh has a penchant for telling genre-breaking stories about people with secret lives. There’s the mom who assumed her daughter’s identity to return to high school; the Michigan farmer who made millions smuggling rare Pez dispensers into … Read more
A week ago, the Nieman Foundation hosted a fabulous event celebrating the Pulitzer’s Centennial. The theater was gorgeous, the stars A-list (Robert Caro, Laura Poitras and Bob Woodward, to name a few), the production flawless. As someone who just moved … Read more
When you read a lot of longform stories, you can’t help noticing something: They tend to be very, very serious. Think fast: How many made you laugh? Epic magazine’s “The Cold War,” by David Wolman and Julian Smith, made … Read more
Taro Yamasaki quit journalism school in 1968 to go to New York and become a photojournalist; he thought he’d become successful very quickly. Although he did do some documentary photography, for the next nine years his resume also included working … Read more
