EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the fourth dispatch from the 2024 Power of Narrative conference at Boston University. For previous posts, see deadline narratives by a Wall Street Journal podcast team, the braided structure used by … Read more
By Jacqui Banaszynski On Wednesday last week, I had a plan for the newsletter: All manner of tidbits were collecting in a file and it was time to use the best of them in an “items” column. On Thursday morning, … Read more
By Talia Richman Before our first meeting about how to tackle a tick-tock of the mass shooting at an outlet mall in Allen, Texas, this spring, Kelley Benham French sent over an annotated copy of David … Read more
By Trevor Pyle When a former student killed 19 students and two teachers in a Uvalde, Texas, elementary school last year, the ache spread worldwide. One who felt the pain keenly was Kim Garza, a professor … Read more
By Jacqui Banaszynski My fingers felt heavy on the keyboard last week as I edited two special posts that were long in the making. The posts themselves explore the kind of craft tools and inspiration — the partnership of … Read more
By Chip Scanlan When Rick Rojas became a national correspondent for The New York Times, a colleague told him to focus on the second word of his new title. As correspondents, Rojas says, “We are, in a … Read more
Shootings are so common in the U.S. that victims are often reduced to 10-point type in news stories: A name and age, maybe alongside a loved ones’ baleful quote set snug against a margin. Peter Sagal made sure … Read more
How much difference does three days make? Too much, at least when it comes to our gnat-like attention span. Three days is the time it takes for the public to shift from outrage to resignation in response to a … Read more
For the past five years, John Woodrow Cox has worked to master the art of helping children talk about a fraught but rarely covered subject — the long-term physical and psychological effects of being victims and witnesses of gun … Read more
