A version of this essay was published as the Storyboard newsletter on Jan. 1, 2020 A flip of a calendar page and, just like that, 2020 is over. Of course, it wasn’t just like that. It wasn’t like anything … Read more
Below are Nieman Storyboard’s top 10 stories, in terms of pageviews and in reverse drumroll order, for 2020. Later this week we’ll include a few of our personal favorites. 10- Navigating ethics, culture and safety … Read more
Once upon a time, the sun and the moon — the man and the woman — had a quarrel over who was the strongest of the two, and whether one or the other should carry out the important task … Read more
This column was originally published as an issue of Nieman Storyboard’s weekly newsletter. You can read back issues of the newsletter and subscribe here. We read most stories from a distance — whether that distance is … Read more
Reporters of a certain place and time — Eugene, Oregon, in the 1970s — loved to tell stories about how they were hired. At the time, the Eugene Register-Guard was considered one of the finest small-city newspapers in the … Read more
We all love a good hero story: Spiderman swooping in to save the day and the girl; Batman brooding towards a better tomorrow; The Avengers joining forces to save the planet. In journalism, we often profile admirable people who … Read more
In his “New in Town” standup comedy special, John Mulaney tells how, when he was 10, he was in love with his babysitter, who he thought was much older. But as an adult, he discovered she’d been only 13 at … Read more
Awards from elite, independent institutions always offer a reminder of the powerful work being done by storytellers of all stripes. None moreso in journalism than the Pulitzer Prizes. This year’s Pulitzer for fiction went to “The … Read more
New York Times sportswriter John Branch is best known in the journalism world for “Snow Fall: The Avalanche at Tunnel Creek.” His gripping long-form narrative, which reconstructed a fatal avalanche in the … Read more
The L.A. Times Book Festival, held over the weekend of April 21-22, is an annual celebration of reading and literary culture in a town often stereotyped as not exactly bookish. But Hollywood runs on stories, so this year the festival … Read more