Surprising stories spring from any number of places. Investigative or narrative or explanatory stories often start with curiosity sparked by a local news story or feature. That’s what happened when an editor at Slate read a story in a … Read more
The anecdote is packed. Daniel Riley was writing a profile for GQ of Brooks Koepka, one of the world’s elite golfers, and he knew immediately that this would be a good scene to anchor his … Read more
America’s quadrennial obsession with Iowa has passed like the season’s last snow storm, there for a turbulent moment but forgotten three days later. The nail-biting over bad election apps and inadequate phone banks and questions of a … Read more
Julia Rosen has probed the myths of America’s deepest lake, looked down on Prince William Sound from a floatplane and joined a quest to scour the Bronx … Read more
Four centuries ago this year, a privateer named the White Lion anchored off Point Comfort, an English colony in what is now Hampton, Virginia. In its cramped hold, it carried 20 or so human beings kidnapped from an ancient … Read more
The Internet of 2019 is rife with social-media influencers and articles about them. Much of the coverage is fawning and superficial: how to become one, how to make $3,000 per Instagram post, how to make … Read more
I’m obsessed with structure. From John McPhee’s sketch for “Travels in Georgia,” which resembles a Fibonacci Spiral, to the lopsided bell curve of the classic story arc, there are examples everywhere to learn from and apply. As Nieman’s … Read more
By early August of this year, 253 American cities had been added to the map of mass shootings. For a day or two after yet another event, officials in these communities — police and politicians — rise to prominence … Read more
In early December, 2016, a fire broke out during a concert at “Ghost Ship,” a one-time warehouse in Oakland, California, that had been turned, mostly illegally and in fits and starts, into a chaotic combination of artists’ collective, makeshift … Read more
When Elizabeth Weil thought of profiling Max Harris, one of two people facing criminal charges for Oakland’s deadly Ghost Ship fire, she figured another reporter must already be on the story. The fire, which took 36 lives when it … Read more
