More than a few friends have asked what I planned to write my last essay as the editor of Nieman Storyboard (published Sept. 27, 2024). One headed his email: “Here’s to a memorable closing newsletter.” (This from a guy who knows how hard it is to write things that are truly memorable.) Others suggested I needed to write something profound, perhaps a grand statement about the imperative of narrative nonfiction in these TikTok times or a reminder of the need for empathy in journalism or a mini-memoir that reinforces my fierce belief in a free, independent and responsible press. Many asked the inevitable “what’s next” question, then urged their own dreams on me: Travel the world, write a book, study the birds.

I’m grateful for all the notes. I hate to let people down. But, with apologies, I’ll paraphrase a line from Annette Benning in “The American President:” You’ll have to learn to live with disappointment.

No grand wrap-ups here. I don’t consider this my career -30- note — something I wrote about a month ago, when I announced that the Nieman Foundation would soon be posting an opening for the next editor of Storyboard. (Great gig. Give it a close look.)

If there’s a difference from leaving the eight other full-time jobs I’ve held in journalism, it’s that I am stepping away from institutional affiliation for the first time in 50 years; 57 if you count the village newspaperI wrote for in high school, my college newspaper and various internships. Demands will continue, of course; bills don’t slow down just because I might. But professional expectations going forward will be no one’s but my own — a bit discomfiting after all those decades filing stories on deadline and finding time for the students lined up outside my office and meeting the responsibilities that came with the paychecks. (When I first became an editor, I told myself I would be the kind of editor I had always wanted. I got over that delusion quickly, and tried to be the kind of editor each of the people around me needed. Maybe now I’ll have to learn what kind of boss and motivator I can be for myself.)

I do want to study the birds a bit. (The first entry on my lifetime list through the Merlin app is a pygmy nuthatch, in case you wondered.) But I’m not retiring my smudgy keyboard. My restless fingers wouldn’t know what to do without it. When I can’t sleep at night or am pondering a problem, I air-type by reflex. If I ever flunk the Medicare three-noun dementia test, I bet I’ll still be able to rattle off the order of the QWERTY keyboard.

More writing, teaching, time and thought

But as I type into whatever is my “what’s next,” I want to do it less frantically and more thoughtfully. I want to grab a fountain pen as often as I fire up my laptop, letting longhand slow me down and access other layers of my mental wanderings. I plan to plow through the boxes of old clips and files in my garage to see if they hold anything of value. (The first box, which I tackled earlier this month, was so musty and dusty that it set off the smoke alarm when I opened it.) I want to actually write and send the many letters I pen in my mind as I’m cleaning or walking or staring out an airplane window. And I want to work more one-on-one and in small groups, giving them undistracted attention.

That latter is somewhat selfish on my part. I always feel I get more than I give when I am trusted to teach, whether as an editor or in a workshop/classroom. No doubt that’s because the relationships are more intimate than those possible when sending ideas out to an anonymous mass audience. My most recent workshop, with five wise and wide-open women who gathered around my dining room table, reinforced that. We parted not just as appreciative colleagues, but as knowing friends. So many of the people I hold dear have come to me through one of dual doors of journalism and teaching.

My datebook shows six workshops scheduled between now and next June. Each will arrive sooner than I expected and sooner than I feel fully ready for. That’s OK. Deadlines are so embedded in how I work that I have come to see them as a gift, and my ability to meet them a strength.

Now it’s the spaces in between that really intrigue and challenge me. I hope to enter them with the attitude of a beloved writer friend who also is at a transition point in a a high-pressure life and career: “I am trying harder to give myself more time, more care and more grace.”

I know the work it took to reach this point I also know what a privilege it is to have arrived. Going forward, I will try to honor the life advice of kick-ass, bad-ass and beloved editor Deborah Howell. Every time I left the newsroom on a big assignment, her words trailed after me: “Don’t f**k it up. And remember to have fun.”

PS: A last bit of lagniappe

First, reporter-turned-novelist Bryan Gruley recently posted a tribute to his marriage on Facebook: “Forty four years. Ten homes. Five cities. More than a dozen jobs. Three kids. Five grandkids. And more to come.” Terrific bit of journalism: A clear focus, with everything that needed to be said, and nothing that didn’t. Try it as a writing exercise about some part of your life.

Next, the same writer friend who wished me a memorable last newsletter added an appreciation for Storyboard, calling it a “lone voice for narrative and storytelling in the wider world of journalism.” Agreed, and I couldn’t be more grateful for its place in my life as follower, contributor and editor. I look forward to returning to those first two roles.

Finally from the unparalleled Dame Maggie Smith, who died Sept. 27, I leave you with a favorite moment from the 2021 Netflix movie “A Boy Called Christmas.” You can read more about it in a Storyboard post I wrote at the time, but here’s moment that has been a North Star in the constellations of my life: “Because the world is made of stories, not atoms.”

The post Pygmy nuthatches, fountain pens, yellowed clips and time ahead appeared first on Nieman Storyboard.

Last Friday, my penultimate Friday newsletter as editor of Storyboard invited you to consider whether you’re the right next person for the role. (I wrote that sentence as a small insider wink at my treasured word-nerd friends out there — those who know what penultimate means and what it doesn’t. I also know the proper spelling of minuscule — no, it’s not mini-scule. But now I’m just being a snob. And, truth is, I usually have to look it up to be sure, because “mini” makes so much more sense. Mountain Editor tells me to think of it as related to “minute” — the one pronounced my-noot — but I always forget that.)

As I contemplated my pending un-tirement, as Mountain Editor calls it, I found myself thinking a lot about Joe Biden. Not just because he now has to figure out how to beat back one more threat of a government shutdown and how to sort out exploding pagers in the Middle East, but because he, too, will soon be taking a step he’s never taken in his long life of public service — one more to the side than forward, at least in the traditional career sense of forward.

I’d love to see Biden’s list of things that Must Get Done before January and talk to him about what he envisions beyond that. I’d love to know if, as he watches crowds swell with enthusiasm for Kamala Harris, he suffers twinges of envy: Hey, that’s my stage. Or if, rather, as he watches her get slathered in political toxins, he utters a little prayer of thanks: Been there. Done that. It’s someone else’s turn on the hot seat.

I wrote a long essay about that as a draft of last week’s newsletter. Or tried to. There’s something there I’m scratching at, but I haven’t yet found the heart of it. Maybe I’m too distracted by learning to play with the Merlin bird app, which I finally let myself download. But the piece wasn’t gelling. So I took some of my own advice from the writing workshop I was hosting at my cabin over the weekend: Sometimes we have to write to explore — to figure out what our story is — rather than as a finished product. Sometimes we have to write and write and write until we figure out what we are trying to say, and then, when we stumble onto it, we cut everything we wrote to get there.

Which is what I did. Was it painful to ditch those first 732 words? Yes.

Was it the right thing to do? Absolutely.

Will I have to write more to understand what’s scratching at me? Probably. Unless I realize it was just something to fuss over for a bit, but not worth more investment. Certainly not worth putting out in the world.

That was my opener when the writers gathered with their coffee and pastries and chaos Friday morning, after I hit SEND on the newsletter. We studied concrete things, like structure and the ladder of abstraction and the difference between dialogue and quotes. But we soon got sucked into the more emotional and psychological aspects of this writing life — what one of the women described as the misery she suffers through as payment for her joy of doing research.

Ayep.

The post Writing to find out what you want to write appeared first on Nieman Storyboard.

[dc]G[/dc]reat job for the right person who has the right passion and knowledge about this important work we call narrative nonfiction: The Nieman Foundation for Journalism, based at Harvard University, is in the hunt for the next editor of Storyboard, the global online resource that covers the art and craft of nonfiction story work.

If you love this kind of journalism, know what it takes to do it, want to reach into the wider world of practitioners to share tools and inspiration, consider raising your hand.

~ Jacqui Banaszynski, soon-to-be emerita Storyboard editor

The post Are you the next editor of Storyboard? appeared first on Nieman Storyboard.

Areporter friend once told me that interviewing, for him, was a “full-body sport.” His toss-off comment was a Yes! moment for me. It crystallized why, when I finished a interview, I was so drained. The exhaustion was more than the residual tension that is a standard part of any interview. Rather, it was flat-out, the kind that comes when your full self — all five physical senses plus the sixth of perception — is engaged. It maybe akin to what athletes feel following a game, when they “leave it all on the field.” When my interviews worked, I was doing more than asking questions and jotting the answers. I was trying to notice everything around me: The song on the radio, the picture on the wall, the edge in a story subject’s voice or the squint in their gaze, the spaces between what they said as much as the words they actually spoke.

Years later, I read somewhere that a small percentage — I can’t remember the actual number, but maybe around 20 percent — of what we communicate is in the words we speak. The rest is conveyed through body language, tone of voice, pauses and loop-arounds, eye contact, our surroundings and so much more. It’s an IMAX theater and surround sound and GIFs and interactive graphics all tripping over each other.

It’s so much fun — when it works. Too often, it doesn’t, either because we, as the interviewers, are distracted or, frankly, are not in the kind of shape it takes to listen, watch, notice, question, wonder and record that fully all at once.

Developing listening skills

I’ve often thought those kind of 360-degree interview skills are missing from most journalism training. I’ve long been fascinated by people who really know how to listen. Not just to check the boxes of behavior that signals listening, but to listen.

During a particularly rocky time in my life, I found a therapist I trusted. I saw her on and off for about 10 years and learned a lot about how I responded to my life, often getting in my own way. But I think the process was slower than it needed to be because I was so busy studying how she did what she did: How she listened to me, attended fully to me for 50 minutes (and then did the same for several others on the same day), got me to sort through and say what I really meant, sometimes when she hadn’t said anything at all. I took note of the shape of her questions — sometimes an open prairie, sometimes a narrow road through my tangled forest of emotion and memory. I watched when she took notes, and when she didn’t.

Since that experience, I have often thought back to the many people in my life who have certain and special listening skills: the good priests, the teachers who figured out how to motivate me, the human resource experts who could suss out a potential hire, the best editors, other reporters. Listening may be the most important skill a reporter — or any caring human being — can have. It is as complex as it is fundamental. Yet most of us only know and practice a few of its many dimensions. True listening demands a lot of us. I am keenly aware of my own limitations, and especially of the times I am simply not present or too selfish enough to really listen.

Body langauge “tells”

This musing was prompted, oddly enough, by last week’s televised debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald J. Trump. (This is where I offer the disclaimer that this is not intended as a political statement. Your interpretation is, of course, yours.) From the moment Harris strode across the stage, entered Trump’s podium space and dared him to shake her hand, I was leaning forward: Well, this is interesting.

I spent the next 90-plus minutes watching as much as listening. As a regular and broad news reader, I didn’t expect to hear anything new about policy. And indeed, I didn’t. But how things were said — how loudly or petulantly or fiercely or passionately or clearly — kept me rapt, as did the facial expressions on display.

I sensed the message being conveyed. Or, to be honest, what I perhaps wanted that message to be. We can’t help but project, which adds to the challenge of good reporting. It’s hard to listen, and impossible to truly hear, if you’re projecting your own entrenched biases and assumptions, or filling in the blanks with what you think are the correct answers.

So I watched the debate, was taken with the show, had my own views — but tried to park assessments I had no expertise to make.

Then, the morning after, I read a piece in Politico by famed “spycatcher” Joe Navarro, a former FBI agent and international consultant on nonverbal communication. I know some people sniff about what they presume are Politico’s political leanings (another assessment I am not studied enough to make). I don’t know anything about Navarro’s. I’m sure there are more than a few out there who question the wisdom of trusting the FBI.

But rather than read Navarro for political hints, I read him as an education in how our bodies add meaning to our words. He assessed “9 Body Language Tells” on display at the debates. His brief set-up was framed like this:

Particularly in politics, words have a way of bending the truth. But the messages we communicate with our bodies — a raised eyebrow, pursed lips, a too-tight smile — speak with an authenticity rarely found in a stump speech.

From there he analyzed everything from posture to eye contact (or lack of same) to the movement of neck muscles, which I learned is called “motion in the laryngeal thyroid cartilage.” I also learned that a true smile is known, by people who study this stuff, a Duchenne smile, in which “the eyes naturally crinkle as the zygomaticus major muscle pulls the corners of the mouth into an easy grin.”

I’m not about to start making judgments by how someone squints when we’re talking. For all I know, they didn’t get much sleep, or have allergies. Acting as a sudden expert in body language is as dangerous for a reporter as acting as a trained therapist.

But how much better would our journalism — and relationships — be if we expanded our listening skills beyond asked-and-answered?

The post Are you really listening? appeared first on Nieman Storyboard.

I’m still here, officially, for another three weeks (through the end of September). After that, I hope to show up on the Nieman Storyboard site as a contributor in ways that support the next editor. Despite the forces working against independent journalism, the art of the work itself gets better and better. Storyboard’s mission is to honor and archive that.

For now, I just want to say an early thanks for all the lovely messages I received after my pre-announcement that I will soon be stepping away after six years as Storyboard editor. Not an easy decision or move — one that your notes make both easier and harder.

(Do you ever wonder why we wait until someone has moved away to tell them how much we value them, or until someone is dead to honor the best of them out loud? I do. I am in awe of a journalist friend who, now of an age, has been taking “friendship tours” to spend time with old friends so he can tell them those things before it’s too late. This same friend also took his boxes of old letters out to his favorite camping site, sat by himself reading each of them, thinking about the time and person, and then releasing them to the campfire gods. How cool is that?)

Your notes have buoyed me about the value of this site and as I go forward. I honestly don’t know where the next trail will lead. But you reminded me that I need to send more thank-you notes along that trail. I encourage you to do the same. Call, write or even text that editor, teacher, reporter, sibling, parent, friend, lover, former lover, flight attendant, nurse or neighbor who has made a difference in your life. It will take you 10 minutes; it will give them endless happiness.

While you’re at it, send an email to a journalist who writes a story you admired. Those in the trenches don’t, alas, get many of those.

The post The power of a note, especially one that says ‘thank you’ appeared first on Nieman Storyboard.

Work as a journalist long enough, or at least start as a journalist long enough ago, and “-30-” was a standard part of your newsroom language. It was typed at the bottom of every story I sent during my early reporting days. (I liked to add a small flourish, so often used curly dashes, like this: ~ 30 ~. Made the guys in the back shop crazy, but that was half the fun.)

Why “-30-?” If you query Dr. Google, you’ll get the usual google-mash, with answers that trip over each other in a rush of contradictory certitude. A 2007 article in the American Journalism Review tried to sort it all out. More mash, so I’ll stick with this summary from the story:

The use of the symbol was once so prevalent that it made its way into Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary, which says 30 is “a sign of completion.”

I am nowhere near completion in journalism or, I hope, in life. But I will put a ~30~ at the end of the Storyboard newsletter a month from now, on September 27. I am stepping away from the editor’s chair, a little more than six years and 325 Friday newsletters after the journalism gods smiled and granted me the gig. Like every turn in my career, it was unexpected and proved the best kind of challenge — one in which I continued to learn about both the craft and myself.

This isn’t an end-of-career retirement to “spend more time with family,” although unrushed family time would be nice. It’s just a shift to whatever challenge comes next — perhaps more teaching, a wider range of writing, some contributing posts to Storyboard or, gulp, that book proposal I’ve been avoiding. (Don’t hold me to that last one.) I want to learn to identify the birds who entertain me outside the cabin windows and to pick up my long-neglected paintbrushes. I want to take road trips and write about what I see, who I meet, what I wonder. I want to read, read, read — as much for pleasure and good citizenship as for work. Mountain Editor suggests I consider this an overdue “untirement.”

I also look forward to following a new voice to carry on the Storyboard mission of exploring the art and craft of story work. The folks at the Nieman Foundation will be posting the job soon, and I’ll make sure to pass it along here and on the Storyboard site. Keep your eye out for it, and raise your hand if it calls to you.

Fitting, it seems, that I was contemplating my last month at Storyboard as we in these dis-United States headed into the Labor Day weekend. I have never subscribed to the notion that if you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life. I have always loved what I do as a journalist and teacher, but it’s often been hard, stressful work. Upside? A never-ending education, and never boring. What would be the point otherwise?

The post Setting up the next chapter of life’s story appeared first on Nieman Storyboard.

Friends and former colleagues from the Upper Midwest have had grand fun in the last few weeks watching a Minnesota vibe infect national politics. Mountain Editor sends frequent links to stories about Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota, who happens to be his second cousin. (No, they’ve never met, but their mothers corresponded. I have encouraged Mountain Editor to give Tim’s mom a congratulatory ring. He fears that might be presumptuous — but his family migrated west to Seattle when he was 6, so he never picked up the ethic of showing up just to say hey; no excuse necessary if you’re carrying a casserole, aka “hot dish” in most of Minnesota, or a plate of lemon bars.)

My friends and I riff on our shared nostalgia for such customs, lapsing into colloquialisms and speech patterns we have long since shed. (If you want a sampling, just go to “You Betcha!,” a newish Substack column by Pulitzer-winning editorial cartoonist Jack Ohman.) Beyond the goofs, though, I drew on the Democratic National Convention, and convention coverage, during a recent writing workshop in northern Wisconsin. The speeches, especially, provided fodder to examine narrative: How a speaker moves through the arc of a story; whether they build around a central theme or meander a bit too much; how they employ the ladder of abstraction, launching off an intimate anecdote to soaring, universal themes. It proved a great way to explore emphasis, pacing and the nebulous notion of  “voice” in writing. (Professional tip to all writers out there: Read your work out loud.)

Consider this succinct analysis from a retired journalist’s Facebook post after Day 2 of the convention:

…forget the words for a few moments, and notice how much tone, pacing and emphasis (or lack thereof) matters. Doug Emhoff comes across as funny, a tiny bit goofy, extremely nice. Michelle Obama’s presentation, in contrast, was almost staccato, delivered with hyper articulation and strong, careful emphasis. A very powerful delivery, almost fierce at times. And Barack: he is eloquent, extremely graceful — look at those hands! — a natural speaker whose smooth delivery contained a lot of tiny pauses. His speech was almost a melody with a rhythm that to me suggests southern pacing.

Analogies and cultural allusions were on abundant display in a convention that hammered themes of diversity and inclusion. Walz, especially, went all in on regional authenticity, from videos of himself at the Minnesota State Fair to his flat-voweled accent to a full field of football references. He earned his right to the latter from his many years coaching high school football. But his pep-talk acceptance speech left a few New York Times columnists a bit befuddled. This from Michelle Goldberg: “Walz made me wish I understood football metaphors.”

We talked in the writing workshop about the power and risk of metaphor. Four of the five writers had no problem with Walz’s talk of fourth downs, blocking and tackling, gaining one yard at a time, leaving it all on the field, reaching the end zone. Two in the group were from the Midwest; one spent several years coaching high school baseball; and one was from Texas so, duh!, football. But a fifth wasn’t having it. She was the youngest among us, a self-described “city girl” from New York who emigrated there with her family when she was 5. Her cultural and ethnic background is Egyptian and Yemeni. She lived in Indiana briefly, but still expressed amazement at the large gatherings of cows she saw on the drive here from the Duluth airport. (I resisted telling her that multiple cows are a herd, not a gathering. Another time, maybe.) In her world, football is not the American version. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if she actually understands the game of cricket.

It all made for a lot of two-way teasing and some strained explanations. Or, as another New York Times columnist said of the Walz speech: The most extended metaphor of the convention. That led to a more serious discussion of how, when and whether you trust your audience to understand your cultural references — and how sometimes you leave people out. Those East Coast ivy-league journalists, who have long misunderstood the nuances of middle America, now find themselves in a game of catch-up as Walz, in his way, and Kamala Harris, in hers, draw from their particular backgrounds and speech patterns.

I had no definitive guidance to give the writers about the effective use of analogy, allusion and metaphor. Questions about writing, I told them again and again, are usually answered with “It depends.” Kind of like life.

But I am quite sure that Walz’s rally speech was part of the playbook — not a last-minute audible.

The post The allusions and confusions of regional references appeared first on Nieman Storyboard.

My radio options are minimal on long stretches of the drive from my city house to the mountain cabin. When I lose a signal altogether, I lean into the silence — no interest in a Sirius subscription or podcasts via my phone. It’s rare time to just think or, better, just drive and wonder at the beauty around me. Watch the road. Watch the colors of the light on the hilltops and the sage on the lowlands. Watch the orchard pickers at work and imagine about how different their lives are from mine and be grateful for the cherries and apples and pears they make possible.

When I can catch a signal, it’s almost always a country music station.

It’s not my first choice. I’m of a certain generation of folk and rock, love big-band swing and ’40s crooners, appreciate some older-era blues, feel my heart swell with Celtic music and am intrigued by a range of international sounds. I’m an unapologetic sucker for Christmas music.

The country music of my childhood seemed like an annoyance of whine-and-twang-and-wail. But my narrow-minded attitude started to change when an early boyfriend pulled out his guitar, when country went outlaw, when Austin City Limits came on TV, when I heard Emmy Lou Harris and Nancy Griffith and Greg Brown in concert, when Rosanne Cash sang from the list prescribed her by her father, when the distinctions of music genres faded and I learned to listen to the stories being told through the music.

Much as I appreciate the emotions that come through classical music and instrumentals, my knowledge of sound isn’t sophisticated enough to interpret an intended story. I don’t engage in it the same as I do with lyrics set to sound. And when I’m alone, for long hours, at the wheel of my car, I need to engage to stay alert.

So on those stretches, I flip past the static, past the Spanish language stations (lo siento), past the preaching until finally I find, on a clear channel, a bit of country.

Again, not my first choice. Sometimes I hit the MUTE button and go back to my own head-chatter. But often I welcome the company. And I’ve learned to value the story work.

Country lessons

Country offers stories in a classic narrative arc. Often that arc is some sort of tragedy: Boy meets girl, boy loves girl, boy messes up and loses girl. Alternate: Boy meets girl, boy loves girl, girl is a player and leaves boy in the lurch. Slightly less often, it’s a finally-got-it-right love song: Boy sees beauty in girl that others have missed, or that even girl herself has missed. Sometimes it’s about death, sometimes birth. Is it a bit Hallmark-y? Sure. But it provides a story line — one that invariably echoes some universal experience. All that in less than two minutes.

I’ve also learned to whoop with glee at the descriptions and metaphors: The love that’s like a welcome-home mat, meant as a compliment. The lost love (“She’s acting single and  I’m drinking doubles.”). The long riff of lust that describes some dude’s pickup truck. Are they over-the-top and clichéd? Sure. But word play is an art, and we need to learn to play before we can make art.

Given the times, I tune in with interest to pronouns. Some singers can take me through all the above love/loss arcs without making them gender specific, or even using pronouns at all. Cue k.d. lang, Melissa Etheridge, et al. It’s an interesting thing to think about for writers who want to respect individual identity preferences without confusing readers.

More and more, I listen for the influences of one defined type of music that becomes evident in so many others. For kicks, I did a quick Google of folks like Bob Dylan and Pete Seeger and Leonard Cohen and Joan Baez and Joni Mitchell and, yep, the Beatles. All once restricted to their outwardly defined lanes. All now given credit as crossovers and influencers.

Our stories should likewise be built on shared foundations, and strive for a reach beyond the niche of subject or style. Our nonfiction narrative needs to stand on the rigorous reporting and fact-checking of investigative work; and investigative pieces should aspire to compelling storytelling.

I get all of this in those road hours with the country station as my company. I forget the songs themselves as soon as I hear them. But I cling to the lessons, with gratitude.

The post Country music lessons appeared first on Nieman Storyboard.

My garage-cleaning project continues to be a tomorrow thing. To ease my guilt a bit, I am tapping a sure-fire procrastinator’s trick: Do some other thing that sort of needs to be done while you’re avoiding that thing that really needs to be done. Fifty years of writing angst have proved a pretty good way to keep my floors scrubbed and laundry folded. Some days, I even get to windows.

In this case, the thing I’m doing instead of cleaning the garage is to tackle a related mess, which are the neglected stories and links in my SAVE file. Some are as dated as the yellowed clips stuffed into boxes in my garage. Some are poignant reminders of time and place, like those jeans I’ll never get back into. But some yield little treasures — stories I tucked away to teach from or essays that offered a bit of inspiration when I needed it.

Taking a cue from another part of my domestic life, which is the BuyNothing movement, I’m passing a few of those things along here, hoping they will find a new use.

Remembering the mission

This isn’t a big-box haul to Goodwill, but a dribble of select items. I’ll start with snippets of wisdom from Cristian Lupsa, founder and editor of DoR Magazine and the Power of Storytelling Conference in Romania. The magazine folded after 13 years because of the same challenges facing news organizations around the world. The conference was suspended during COVID, but a reunion edition is planned for spring 2025. Lupsa stays deeply involved in journalism, with a growing passion for how we can align our mission even more closely with public service and solutions in today’s fractured world. You can follow his explorations and wisdom on “Draft Four” on Substack. For now, two quick moments:

Lupsa has found himself discouraged by the state of journalism and civic incivility. On May 19, Lupsa wrote about “diminishers” vs “illuminators,” and the danger of anger as a journalistic motivation:

The majority (of people) don’t trust journalists, not because they don’t trust their information – but because they don’t even trust their intentions.

Less than a month later, on June 9, he tapped a bit of an antidote. He had attended the awards ceremony for the 2024 European Press Prize, which he helped judge for two years. He included links to some of the winners and a few other favorite stories. He acknowledge that the subject of many of the winning entries provide ample reason to be angry at the state of the world, and again advocated for a journalism of caring. He also echoed something I’ve always felt after plowing through piles and piles of contest entries, which remind me that, as disheartening as the story subjects are, the service to mission hasn’t faltered:

Every time we feel down about the state of journalism, reading the best of it out there is a cure.

PS: On saving your clips

It’s dangerous to assume your digital clips will survive forever,  no matter how or where they’re stored. Nieman Lab recently wrote about the history that is lost when journalistic archives are lost. Many journalists, aware of that risk, are scrambling on their own to save their work. I did my own such scramble eight years ago, when I tried to track my old clips through 20 years and five newsrooms.

The post A writer’s hack: Productive procrastination appeared first on Nieman Storyboard.

I didn’t know the woman honored in an essay in the Phoenix Spirit, a Minnesota-based publication focused on emotional and spiritual health. Even after reading it, I only knew her first name, Eileen, that she was a professor and gardener and walker, that she explored with art, and that she had died of ovarian cancer.

Yet by the end of the piece, I felt I knew far more about writing, and about life.

That happened throughout the tribute, written by the woman’s walking friend, Mary Lou Logsdon. I met Logsdon in a writing workshop several years ago. She had, over the years, moved away from more traditional career pursuits and was working as a spiritual advisor; as part of that, she writes a column for the Phoenix Spirit, which is as thoughtful as it is well-crafted.

Her tribute to Eileen is a masterpiece of profile writing. Much of Eileen’s story seemed quotidian stuff, but Logsdon had a way of punctuating it, at paragraph ends, with a little hitch of surprise or meaning. Consider these two grafs:

While I was already retired from my first career, she was fairly new at the University. She had married right out of high school to an Army man she met while her father was stationed in Alaska. She soon had two children, was living in a trailer house near her husband’s Wisconsin family and left alone while he told stories into the night at the local bar. She walked her children past and sometimes into the nearby college, peeking around corners to see what life was like for the students she saw, not much younger than her. She feared they’d know she didn’t belong.

When she told him she got a job at the college, he assured her they would never keep her. What could she offer? She took one college class followed by another, growing in confidence and amazement as she discovered a new side of herself.

The pacing and detail kept me going through a story I otherwise might have given a brief scan. As I read, I was able to touch the edges of Logsdon’s loss. I learned about a person I would like to have known. I thought about my own close friends and what I most value about them. I considered what they give to my life, what I would miss about them if they were gone, and whether I spend enough time tending to the gifts of their friendship.

These are the kinds of things not only eulogies, but all intimate storytelling should do. They tell us the story of one to tell us the story of all — and of ourselves.

That was capped, with grace, by the last paragraph of Logsdon’s essay, and by a last line that is a stunning bit of both writing and life wisdom:

Eileen died June 10, 2024. She leaves a big hole in my life and in my heart. A person could protect themselves from this aching sorrow by not bothering to venture into love. That would come at a much higher cost. Besides, there’s more room in a broken heart.

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