Conclusion based on anecdotal evidence: Anyone who writes a regular column for a newspaper or magazine works harder than you know. Corollary: Community newspaper columnists, who usually can’t tap events outside their small community, work even harder. Ashley Lodato … Read more
Editor’s note: This is the second of five posts from the 2022 Power of Narrative conference at Boston University. The first post features New York Times reporter Ellen Barry with tips on first-person narratives and … Read more
Bayfield, Wisconsin, is a charming little village, population 500 or so, that sits on the northernmost peninsula of the state, along the southern shore of Lake Superior. It looks out onto a ice-clear body of water called the Chequamegon … Read more
With the summer of 2021 drawing to an end, Mike Wilson, the deputy sports editor in charge of enterprise and investigations at The New York Times, wanted to celebrate the season (it seemed COVID might be … Read more
If you have read the novels of Dennis Lehane (among them “Gone, Baby, Gone,” “Mystic River” and “Shutter Island,” all made into movies), you know that place is a powerful character, even a protagonist, in his … Read more
Speculation runs hot these days about a return to some kind of post-pandemic normal. Among my employed journalism friends, that raises the question: When do you think you’ll go back? In this case, it doesn’t mean back to work. Read more
Cal Hooper is a Chicago cop who was ditched by his wife, estranged from his daughter, haunted by past cases and addicted to the action. Somewhere along the way, the guiding line between right and wrong became fuzzy. Fed … Read more
Some writing comes together bit by bit, a mosaic of thoughts and observations gathered over days or months or years. Slowly or suddenly, a bigger picture emerges through a confluence of details and facts. Sometimes the writer doesn’t fully … Read more
With transportation stymied by a pandemic, Wright Thompson couldn’t exactly hop on a plane to research a story on Michael Jordan. Instead, the ESPN senior reporter built a time machine, one interview at a time. The resulting story is … Read more
