It’s a big day at Lippmann House — the new class of Nieman Fellows arrived this morning, to begin their year at Harvard. And a special year it is. The Nieman Foundation for Journalism turns 75 in September. Read more
I’m old enough to have practiced as a state prosecutor for a while, but I still laugh at fart jokes. Regardless of the flatulent punch line, Larry the Cable Guy’s trademark quip, “I don’t care who you are, that’s funny … Read more
If you missed a post or two in our weeklong recap of this year’s Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Conference, here’s the roundup: On Tuesday, the Tampa … Read more
Tampa Bay Times reporter Kelley Benham went into labor four months early and delivered her daughter, Juniper, at 23 weeks: a baby who weighed 20 ounces and was no taller than a Barbie doll. Doctors told Benham and … Read more
Tomorrow through Friday we’ll feature exclusive outtakes from this month’s Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Conference at the University of North Texas. This year’s correspondents: veteran journalists Lee Hancock and Charlie Lewis, whose bios you’ll find below. (In … Read more
Pinned and pulled for your weekend reading pleasure, Storyboard’s three favorite reads this week, plus 10 tips on artful interviewing from Pulitzer winner Isabel Wilkerson and others: 1) “Lost in the Long White … Read more
The Boston Globe's Kevin Cullen isn't just live-tweeting the trial of one of the country's most notorious mob figures — he's telling a story. This thread picks up with Monday morning testimony and runs through lunch. For more Cullen Twitter coverage, follow him. Read more
Pinned this week week for your storytelling pleasure: Highly recommended: In schools, the complexity in assigned reading is dropping, NPR reports: “A century ago, students were being assigned books with the complexity of around the ninth- or 10th-grade level. Read more
Welcome, new readers! Our audience has grown considerably lately, so we thought this might be a good time to recap Storyboard’s goods and services, and to invite you to follow us on Twitter, Pinterest and Facebook. We’re a Nieman … Read more
In good fiction, the reader absorbing a compelling narrative never notices the writer as intermediary. In nonfiction, that translator’s presence is inevitable. Since the former is the ideal relationship with the reader, the more you can bring that non-point of view to nonfiction narrative, the better. In other words, as a writer, no matter what the hell you’re writing, do your best to kill your ego, even if those are mutually exclusive ideals. (i.e.: He could have told the story of the effect of that atomic bomb on an innocent city by telling us what he found when he went over there, and it would have been a good piece. Instead he gave the story over to the six survivors, and it earned a place in immortality.) Read more
