Why is it great? Well, first of all, it comes from the great Sarah Lyall, who was the longtime London correspondent for The New York Times. She has such a wonderful voice: charming, funny, intimate. This comes from her book … Read more
Why is it so great? I found this quote from the absolutely amazing Ida B. Wells after The New York Times righted an old wrong by publishing her obit — almost exactly 87 years after her death. She was so … Read more
When Amy Padnani moved from The New York Times’ news desk to its obits department last year, she was charged with the task of “exploring different ways of storytelling with obituaries.” “It’s a forum for people to talk to … Read more
This week we celebrated the vernal equinox, this moment of rebirth and hope as we ease out of winter. (Of course, New England got hit with another snowstorm, as if winter was all Glenn Close in “Fatal Attraction” and “I … Read more
“Have you ever heard the absolute silence?” So asks a young lobsterman on Maine’s Matinicus Island, one of the handful of people who live year-round on the island, 22 miles out to sea and smaller than Central Park. The … Read more
This week we spotlighted the storytelling of the Middle East on Storyboard. Too often the coverage is of the bird’s-eye-view variety, either because of dangerous conditions or cultural differences. But these posts highlight the humanity that kind of reporting misses: … Read more
Why is it great? This story was part of the late writer’s Iraq coverage that won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize in International Reporting. It captures Iraqis’ sense of loss in the war, and the loss that had seeped … Read more
If Dan Barry has a beat, it is humanity — humanity as it reckons with its triumphs and travesties, and, sometimes, its profound secrets. Why does Barry begin a story about a long-hidden trove of bones with a girl … Read more
This week’s One Great Sentence, by the novelist John Cheever, has stayed with me all week. It’s an existential matter for writers and artists of all types, the battle between the introspective and mostly solitary process of creating and the … Read more
“The Uncounted,” Azmat Khan and Anand Gopal’s exhaustively reported investigation into the scale of civilian casualties in the U.S.-led coalition’s fight against ISIS, begins, like many disaster narratives, with a banal domestic scene. But in this case, the humdrum … Read more