EDITOR’S NOTE: This post was published in partnership with our friends at the Poynter Institute. As the 20th anniversary of Sept. 11 looms, I am reminded of one of my favorite anthologies of journalism: … Read more
How do you write about a shared event that changes the world, but that we each experience personally? And how do you then share that personal experience back to the world in a meaningful way? I’ve been pondering those … Read more
In “The Art of Description: World into Word,” Mark Doty writes that Proust endeavored to “dilate the sentence toward its outer limit, so that one would feel the blur of space and time that the unit of syntax … Read more
EDITOR’S NOTE: Tomorrow we feature an interview with Max Blau, a local reporter who made a successful pitch to ProPublica, and an annotation of the pitch. Blau is now a staff reporter for ProPublica based in Atlanta. Freelancers and … Read more
Forgive the movie reference, especially if you long ago ditched the Mel Gibson fan club. But a moment early in “The Patriot” offers apt wisdom when struggling with a story pitch. The short version: Colonial settler … Read more
“If you know what you want to say, you’ll figure out how to say it.” That’s what Steve Padilla, editor of Column One at the Los Angeles Times, told a virtual gathering of the San Diego Press Club on … Read more
Of what we’ve unscientifically defined as the seven fatal flaws of story pitches, this one probably seems the most lame. Of course, your idea is interesting; you wouldn’t be pitching it if it weren’t. (Unless, of course, you’re … 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
For Mayukh Sen, a James Beard Award-winning food writer and adjunct professor at NYU, the entry point into food writing has always been the stories of the people behind the food. Having suffered immense personal losses … Read more
Curiosity grounds all good journalism. Following up on curiosity — wondering about everything, and then caring to find out — is what makes journalism soar. Read more
