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Gangrey’s Ben Montgomery wants to grab you by the shirt collar

By Narrative News October 29, 2009

[The second in an occasional series aimed at helping readers find online resources that focus on narrative journalism.] For more than four years, Gangrey.com has rounded up the best print narratives on a daily basis. Founder Ben Montgomery, who is also a reporter with Florida’s St. Petersburg Times, talks here about his personal motivation for starting his site and what he thinks narrative journalism can do. On what makes a good Gangrey story: Does it have something that’s surprising? Is it entertaining? Will it keep my attention? Is there some device being used that I’ve never seen before? And on the multimedia components for his latest print narrative: I couldn’t have pulled that off if it had required more effort from me. We wouldn’t have achieved the same level of—I don’t want to say excellence—the same level of story for either of those things, if both [the print story and the video] had required my attention. If journalists are required to write the story and compose the multimedia elements going into it, both parts tend to suffer. Read the full interview » Read more