EDITOR’S NOTE: Cathy Henkel, a retired newspaper reporter and editor from Seattle, was wintering on the west coast of Mexico when borders closed because of COVID. She turned a hobby of shell-and-stone creations into a daily practice and posted it … Read more
The TV reporter is just another TV reporter, one more mid-market face, holding a microphone, speaking in clipped vowels, an interchangeable local news personality with the kind of interchangeable local news name that promises neither great ambition nor wild … Read more
Fred introduced me to Jerry Jeff Walker — by that, I mean that Fred sent me home, from the Lone Star State, with two purple CDs, one of which shimmered with a track called “Sangria Wine.” I labeled the … Read more
I’ve been struggling to find the right term for the nonfiction writing I most admire. Whether written by Joan Didion, David Grann, Susan Orlean, Héctor Tobar, Isabel Wilkerson, or Gene Weingarten, these are articles, essays, and books that combine … Read more
I was re-reading an old essay of mine that I’d sent out nine times but could never sell. As I finished it, I thought, “Damn, I like this essay. Why did no one want it?” I decided to send … Read more
The announcement of Kamala Harris as Joe Biden’s running mate on the Democratic presidential ticket was barely two minutes old when sitting President Donald Trump called Harris “nasty.” He followed with a relentless volley of demeaning insults. And by … Read more
I’ll go great lengths not to affect a story during the reporting process. Journalists are supposed to be the observer, not the actor, right? Our job is to witness and question a story — not to create or shape … Read more
On a warm spring night in 1974, I was an Ohio University student reporter amid a riot. Not a riot against repression or inequality or injustice or the Vietnam War, not that sort of riot. Rather, the sort of … Read more
We’re all reinventing ourselves in this suddenly sideways world. So here’s my reinvention story, and the theme that goes with it: Do it for love. The micro of what I did in the last 18 months was teach myself … Read more
The job I moved back to New Hampshire for was not Shift Supervisor at the local branch of a national drug store chain. Back in February, I folded up five years of full-time freelancing to take a “perfect” journalism … Read more
