Joe Rhodes pulls off the nearly impossible in “How My Aunt Marge Ended Up in the Deep Freeze,” an edgy New York Times magazine piece. He takes a horrific event—the murder of a family member, an … Read more
Susan Orlean likes to do something not many other journalists can get away with. In many of her articles Orlean tells us, right there on the page, what she’s thinking about her subjects. But it’s a trick. Orlean, … Read more
For the better part of the last decade, the Nieman Foundation for Journalism ran the most popular narrative journalism conference in the country. For three days each spring, hundreds of journalists gathered in Cambridge or Boston to hear notable storytellers … Read more
An exciting word from the mothership: CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – The Nieman Foundation for Journalism has hired Louise Kiernan to edit Nieman Storyboard, a website that showcases exceptional narrative journalism and explores the future of nonfiction storytelling, and Steve Almond to teach … Read more
Several years ago, Adam Hochschild, the acclaimed author of King Leopold’s Ghost and other nonfiction narratives, told a Vanderbilt University audience that academic writing doesn’t have to be boring. Scholars of history and science — theoretically any discipline — can use basic storytelling techniques … Read more
It isn’t often that a narrative journalist’s retirement makes the news, but when Sports Illustrated announced this spring that longtime writer Gary Smith would be leaving the business, the public eulogies — and the “ … Read more
This year’s Investigative Reporters & Editors conference starts Wednesday in San Francisco, and there are no fewer than nine panels, workshops and master classes on storytelling. Registration is still open for IRE members ($100 for students; $260 for … Read more
Whether you spell them “ledes” or “leads,” opening lines get a lot of attention. And why wouldn’t they? Sitting at the keyboard, with all the tedious and sometimes annoying reporting done, a writer is spoiled for choice, a world of … Read more
The sentence: The world’s most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money. The writer: Matt Taibbi The … Read more
The new storytelling collective Deca launched late last week with a Kickstarter campaign and a debut title, “And the City Swallowed Them,” about the murder of a Canadian model in Shanghai, by … Read more