“Excuse me for interrupting, but you’re The Writer, right?” 

I looked up from my conversation at a coffee shop in Pittsburgh’s Shadyside neighborhood to see a burly man with a chest-length beard the color of steel wool. He wanted to know if my coffee companion was, in fact, Lee Gutkind — the writer, editor, and professor whom Vanity Fair in 1997 called “the Godfather behind creative nonfiction.”  

It was. The bearded guy introduced himself as a writer-friend of someone whom Gutkind had taught in the English Department at the University of Pittsburgh, where Gutkind had founded Creative Nonfiction, a literary journal-turned-magazine that catalyzed the evolution of the genre. 

After telling us about the novel he had (finally) finished, the bearded man spent 10 minutes fan-girling over Gutkind, a soft-spoken, white-haired, bespectacled professor who had no idea who this guy was (a ceramic artist and lead guitarist for a band called Old Money Jesus). Then the man turned to me and said, with the earnestness of a Swiftie:

“This is like an Elvis encounter!” 

Gutkind and I were three hours into what was intended to be a one-hour chat, and this was the fourth celebrity sighting. As we introduced ourselves to each other outside Jitters café, an award-winning playwright stopped him on the sidewalk. As the playwright filled my ear with praise for Gutkind, a woman passing by on the sidewalk reached in, without a word, to hug Gutkind’s neck and kiss his godfatherly cheek. When we moved to Georgie’s Corner for lunch, the owner thanked him by bringing us a free cupcake and chocolate chip cookies. 

And, of course, he was receiving extended attention from me. I was in Pittsburgh to celebrate my grandmother’s 100th birthday. When I realized Gutkind lived there, too, I invited him for coffee to talk about “Creative Nonfiction: The Final Issue,” an anthology of 32 essays representing the kaleidoscope of nonfiction writing published by the magazine over 30 years. I was still mourning the end of Creative Nonfiction’s publishing run in 2022. But I was grateful for the unusual parting gift: “The Final Issue” is being mailed to his 2,800 subscribers — free. 

“I felt I owed you guys something,” he said. 

The spark of a movement

Flashback: It’s the early 1990s, and Gutkind is an English professor at Pitt — the only one he knows of there “without any advanced degree whatsoever.” He is surrounded by poets, fiction writers, and playwrights who consider nonfiction inferior. He wants to write nonfiction that reads like fiction. 

True stories, mind you — based entirely on fact — but stories deployed with the tools of fiction: scenes, dialogue, point of view, voice, characters as fully rounded as any found in literature. 

“I was an outlier,” he said. “But I thought there were so many writers like me, writing nonfiction that read like short stories.” 

He had long admired the characters and craft experiments of the New Journalists, rebels who started rewriting the rules of nonfiction in the 1960s. Think Gay Talese’s profile of Frank Sinatra — written without any real access to the star — in “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold” (1966). Or the hallucinogenic narrative fugue of Tom Wolfe’s “Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test” (1968). Or Joan Didion’s artfully fragmented portraits of young hippies, forming her mosaic of Haight-Ashbury counterculture in “Slouching Towards Bethlehem” (1968). 

“I thought, this is really something,” Gutkind said. “And I wanted to do that.” 

Whatever “that” was needed a name. Something other than “New Journalism,” because the J-word was off-putting to folks in the literary world, who considered factual writing antithetical to creative writing. 

Gutkind embraced the term “creative nonfiction,” because he felt it encompassed the broadest spectrum: memoir, essays, narratives, profiles, immersion reportage, and so on.

“I wasn’t the first person to use that term,” he said. “But I was the first person who really hung onto it.” 

Journalists recoiled. “They hated the word ‘creative,’” Gutkind said. “They thought it meant you could make stuff up, which wasn’t true.”

Creative writers took umbrage, too. “They resisted the evolution of the essay and the idea that creative nonfiction could take shape and read like fiction.” 

Literary critics were among the harshest naysayers. As Gutkind recalls in the introduction to “The Final Issue,” an editor for The New York Times Book Review described creative nonfiction as “bullshit. … If it is creative, then it’s not nonfiction and if it is nonfiction then it’s not creative.” 

And so began years of  “literary fistfights” — the theme of his memoir, published last year by Yale University Press, which is as much a history as it is a memoir. “The Fine Art of Literary Fist-Fighting” chronicles not only Gutkind’s personal arc but the evolution of creative nonfiction from an incite-fully oxymoronic term into its own legitimate genre.  

“My mission was always to make creative nonfiction the ‘fourth genre,’” Gutkind told me — as respectable as fiction, poetry, and playwriting. “I wanted people to accept it. I got a little crazy about it. I really pushed.”

Gutkind fought so hard to legitimize the genre that a Vanity Fair writer called him “a human octopus.” Which, in retrospect, could be considered a back-handed (or eight-handed) compliment. In the same derisive critique of “Creative Nonfiction” (both the magazine and the genre), the critic dismissed memoir — including Frank McCourt’s Pulitzer winning “Angela’s Ashes” and “The Liar’s Club” by Mary Karr — as “navel-gazing” and “civic journalism for the soul.”

A slow embrace of the form

Flash forward: It’s 2024, almost 2025. The Vanity Fair critic who snubbed memoir as “navel-gazing” published his own umbilically contemplative memoir 10 years after writing those very words — figuratively and literarily eating them. 

Creative Nonfiction had evolved from a perfect-bound literary journal with 150 subscribers to a quarterly magazine with a small but devoted readership of 2,800 paying subscribers and 35,000 on the email list. It had published writing by the likes of Valerie Boyd, John McPhee, Richard Rodriguez, Charles Simic, and many other “outliers.” It had become a literary lab for Pulitzer Prize winners and National Book Award recipients and even some non-writers with a great story to tell — all of them true-storytellers experimenting with craft and form.  

It had become legit. 

The genre, meanwhile, had evolved from a concept that irritated both journalists and English majors into a genre worthy of its own MFA programs. Gutkind helped start the first ones — at the University of Pittsburgh and the low-residency program at Goucher College — both in 1997. 

Acceptance expanded. As Gutkind writes in “Literary Fist-Fighting”: 

“There are more than 200 MFA creative writing programs and three dozen PhD programs — not just in the U.S. but in Asia, New Zealand, Australia, Ireland the UK, and other countries. Nearly every week, creative nonfiction books appear on the bestseller lists of The New York Times and The Washington Post; they are featured and reviewed and excerpted in major magazines and on literary websites. Many newspapers today, once critical of creative nonfiction (and the New Journalism of the 1960s and 1970s), regularly solicit and publish personal essays for opinion and feature pages. News stories, once limited by the five Ws — who, what, when, where, why — are often written as dramatic narratives.”

Creative nonfiction is now one of the fastest-growing disciplines in both academia and publishing, Gutkind says. Which seems like an appropriate setup for a mic drop. So I was astonished when Gutkind told me that he had never been invited to speak at the Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Conference at the University of North Texas or the Power of Narrative Conference at Boston University (formerly hosted by the Nieman Foundation). 

What? Why?! 

It seems that the parallel universes of literary journalism and creative writing still haven’t fully merged; they coexist as a sort of Venn diagram, with a little overlap between two curiously siloed disciplines. As a writer who haunts the overlap, I have witnessed this: at conferences attended by journalists but few MFAs; at writers’ residencies where I was the lone journalist among poets and novelists, even in my own classrooms. 

I’ve taught creative nonfiction in English departments where I had to find a word other than “reporting” to teach students how to research better material for their stories, and I’ve taught feature writing in journalism programs where I struggled to get experienced reporters to understand what a scene is, or the difference between dialogue and quotes. 

Both camps could benefit from the sort of cross-pollination that Gutkind sought to infuse in his magazine and his classrooms. But even after 30 years, he feels rejected by literary journalists who can’t seem to get past the C-word — as if “creative” implies making stuff up instead of the creativity of the craft. 

Gutkind has been pressed through the years to define “creative nonfiction.” He has refused, because he didn’t want to define boundaries that might limit the creativity and experimentation of writers. He felt that writers should be the ones to define the genre through their writing. That said, his magazine’s tagline offers a sort of definition, with plenty of room for interpretation: 

True stories, well told. 

Keeping the story flame alive

In 2022, Gutkind left his final professorship at Arizona State University and returned to Pittsburgh, coming full circle (like a good essay) back to where he began. After shutting down the magazine and co-editing the anthology with Leslie Rubinkowski, his former student, he has more time to focus on his own writing, wrangling a narrative that has been incubating for some time and thinking about the future of creative nonfiction. 

Not long after the magazine ceased, Gutkind received an email from Narratively, a storytelling platform that champions true storytelling in many forms: written stories, podcasts, TV, film, and an educational arm called Narratively Academy, which offers online writing workshops.  

Not knowing the magazine had stopped publishing, the crew at Narratively asked if Gutkind might want to share a piece they had published. He was already “a fan and admirer” of Narratively and found the timing a moment of kismet, because he’d just been thinking about reaching out to the site “with some ideas about how we might work together.”  

Narratively’s founders, Noah Rosenberg and Brendan Spiegel, were journalists who found themselves stymied by the storytelling constraints of what they call “big journalism.” Their story ideas were repeatedly rejected as “too quirky, complex, or in-depth for mainstream media,” according to their website. So in 2012 they built a platform “that champions diverse, indie journalists and storytellers and celebrates humanity through the most authentic, unexpected and extraordinary true narratives.” Narratively has since been lauded as one of TIME’s 50 Best Websites (2013) and Columbia Journalism Review’s 11 Best Experiments in Journalism (2015). 

These journalists, who are of a younger generation, didn’t see themselves as part of a separate camp. When Rosenberg discovered Creative Nonfiction 20 years ago, he thought: I’m not alone. I’ve finally found my people. And Gutkind was one of them. 

“He’s the consummate player-coach,” Rosenberg told me on the phone. “He has practiced the craft. He has helped define the craft in so many powerful important ways, while also becoming an important teacher and mentor.” 

Synergy can be an off-putting word. So let’s call what happened next a syzygy.

The journalists and the creative nonfictionist got on the same page (which would be a cliché if it weren’t a double entendre). In February they announced a partnership. Their first collaboration is a series called “The Art of Narrative Storytelling,” which invites writers to examine the stories that move them and try to crack the code that makes them work. Narratively will also offer a discounted subscription to Creative Nonfiction subscribers, but more importantly, an alternative to the void left by Creative Nonfiction, with the Godfather’s blessing. 

“The advice he has offered us has demonstrated that he’s willing to pass the baton,” Rosenberg said. “Which is a responsibility we don’t take lightly.” 

A writer’s reality check

If this were a news article, that would be a fine kicker. But in homage to the Godfather, this is a story, and we will end it with a flashback. 

It’s 1965 and Gutkind is a freshman at Pitt, taking Composition 101. His professor is teaching the five-paragraph essay: intro, three paragraphs supporting three points, conclusion. It feels limiting and frustrating and not what young Gutkind thinks writing should be — at least not any writing he’d want to read. 

So he goes rogue. Instead of an academic-style paper, Gutkind turns in a story. 

His professor catches on. Sees what he’s doing. Purses his lips and tells his student: 

“You ought to think about becoming a writer.” 

Seven years later, Gutkind published his first book, “Bike Fever: On Motorcycle Culture.” He would go on to become a leather-clad professor who stomped into class in motorcycle boots and smoked cigarettes during his lectures. He credits his 101 professor for unlocking the door to this life.

Over the years, Gutkind wrote letters and email trying to reach the prof to thank him. He never heard back. Perhaps he’d been “way too overboard in appreciation and praise.” Maybe all that fan-girling had made the poor man uncomfortable. 

Then, one day, he was sitting in a coffee shop and saw his teacher walking by on the street.

I’ll let the Godfather finish the story:

“I rushed outside and pursued him, calling his name quite loudly to get his attention. When I caught up with him and told him how he had been instrumental in launching my writing life — I had by then published two books — I realized why he had never replied. … He had no idea who I was.” 

***

Kim Cross is the author of creative nonfiction stories and books, including “What Stands in a Storm” and “In Light of All Darkness.”

The post Passing the torch of the creative nonfiction movement appeared first on Nieman Storyboard.

The Nobels announced last week mostly honor achievement in the sciences (with one prize for literature), but if you think no bells ring for the narrative nonfiction practitioner, think again.

The True Story Award recognizes exceptional journalism from across the globe, published in any of 10 widely spoken languages (entries in translation from other languages are also accepted). The prize was launched in 2018 by an independent journalism consortium based in Bern, Switzerland, with the goal to “make reporters’ voices known beyond the borders of their home countries, and in doing so to increase the diversity of perspectives offered in the media.”

The True Story Award 2025 contest will award prizes in three categories of nonfiction journalism: research, storytelling and impact. Winners of the top prize in each category, to be announced in June, will receive $20,000.

The deadline is fast approaching: Entries for stories published between Oct. 1, 2023, and Sept. 30, 2024, will be accepted until Oct. 22.

In the U.S., submissions are now being accepted for the prestigious National Magazine Awards, which, though once restricted to work published in print magazines, now “recognize magazine storytelling published in any medium, including newspapers and newsletters.”

The awards, now in their 60th year, are sponsored by the American Society of Magazine Editors in association with the Columbia Journalism School. Winners will be announced in April.

For content published before Oct. 15 of this year, the deadline for submissions is Oct. 24, though late entries will be accepted until Oct. 31 for an additional fee. Submissions for content published in November and December will be accepted at the end of each of those respective months.

The post Upcoming 2024 Narrative Nonfiction Prizes appeared first on Nieman Storyboard.

Seattle-based freelance journalist Wudan Yan is a founder, producer and host of The Writers’ Co-op podcast. She’s a business coach, a content marketing writer and an advocate for fair and prompt pay for freelancers. She’s a knitter of beautiful sweaters, a rock climber and a long-distance hiker who takes on continent-spanning trails.

Next month, to add to that extensive bio, she will open the virtual doors of Factual, an agency that matches nonfiction storytellers across platforms with vetted fact-checkers to help ensure the accuracy of their work. The agency is an expansion of Yan’s business-savvy approach to freelance journalism and draws on her own experience as a fact-checker of magazine articles, books, podcasts and documentary films.

Storyboard spoke with Yan about the new venture and the nature of fact-checking, but also about how she juggles major projects and what she calls her journalism escape fantasy. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

First, what is Factual?
Factual is an agency that matches people producing nonfiction works — books, podcasts, documentaries, memoirs, and so forth — with a fact-checker who meets Factual’s standards. You can think of us as matchmaker or a dating app for fact-checking.

The intended client differs based on the industry. For instance, if a magazine wants to hire a stable of fact-checkers to check every single issue of their magazine, the magazine pays them.; the freelancers writing for the magazine don’t pay for the fact-checking. For books, the burden to pay for fact-checking shifts to the author. For podcasts it’s often the production company that pays for fact-checking. For documentary films, it may be the distributor.

In my business model, the client pays Factual, which takes a fee for its services, like a literary agency does, and Factual pays the freelance fact-checker a project fee. Prices set with the client help ensure I can pay my operations staff and the fact-checkers what they want to make to support their income goals. Fact-checkers get paid by the project, too, and are responsible for making sure they earn what they want, which is a minimum of $30 an hour.

What about people who work for newspapers? They generally don’t have their work vetted by fact-checkers. Do you have advice about what they can do to fact-check their own work?
First, I think we need to define fact-checking, because the way you used fact-checking in that question is not how I would define it. People refer to three separate things as fact-checking.

My definition is pre-publication fact-checking, which is when the nonfiction project has not yet been brought forth into the world. Somebody who has not been involved in the production, writing or editorial process comes in with fresh eyes to verify things, propose suggestions for accuracy and flag inaccuracy. That is what Factual will provide: pre-publication fact-checking.

Another definition is post-publication fact-checking. I like to call this the fact-debunking industry, like Snopes and PolitiFact. So if Kamala Harris and Donald Trump debated, this is combing back through what they said for accuracy.

The third is when a reporter says: No third party helped; I did the fact-checking myself. But you can’t fact-check your own work. In my view, fact-checking is similar to the peer review process in science: You submit a paper and then other people vet its methods. In that model, fact-checking only works if somebody else is doing it. If you are doing it yourself, you are double-checking your own work, and I cannot consider that fact-checking. A new set of eyes brings some disinfectant to the whole editorial process.

Might the solution be to have a colleague in the newsroom look it over?
At some newspapers, the copy editor helps with fact-checking. If you are filing a story for a newspaper, it can be instructive to provide fact-checking annotations. If the editor wants to change the text for readability, they can go to the source material and figure out an accurate way to do that.

You do a lot. I think every freelance journalist would like to know how you juggle it all, or at least I would.
Over the years I’ve learned that not all my dreams need to be realized at once. The way that I made room to launch an agency is similar to the way I plan out a reporting project that is due in six months: I set manageable goals for myself every month. Example: In quarters one and two of 2024, I realized I had 10 hours a month to figure out Factual. Once I determine that, I just have to hold myself accountable.

This is the through-hiking perspective as well: On long trails, eventually I’m hiking 20-plus miles a day, but that’s not where I start. Building that muscle and rhythm into my workflow helps me account and reprioritize whatever’s going on in my life and business every month, every quarter.

What advice do you have for journalists who would like to become fact-checkers?
I think reporters are uniquely suited to being good fact-checkers. What happens so often with freelancers is that they are scared to start doing something new, even though the skills are transferable. For freelance reporters looking to break into fact-checking, emphasize your skills at chasing down facts and hunting the best source. Bring that to clients that you’ve loved working with before that might use fact-checkers: Hey, I’m offering a new service. Do you need any help?

This is expanding your service offerings as a freelancer rather than breaking into a new service. We have a whole episode on The Writers’ Co-op about ways to frame the transfer of skills from one service area or industry to another. Brooke Borel also wrote a good reference book about fact-checking. But there is no better way to learn than to practice.

In addition to your business focus, you are a talented journalist. Will we be seeing more journalistic work from you soonThank you. I am a freelance journalist who cares a lot about the craft, but I see my first business, my editorial business, as laying the groundwork for learning how to be an entrepreneur. I’ve started two businesses and now am on my third. I know how much the journalism industry is struggling. What I’ve taken from these 10 years of freelancing is how to build a business. If we’re talking about escape fantasies from journalism, that’s probably where I’m headed if my priorities change.

It gives me a lot less fear about this media environment for myself, but we shouldn’t take this on individually; we should fix the system. Personally, I see that freelancing let me build up the skills for running a business, which I then scaled up. It can give you the confidence to run other types of businesses as well.

* * *

Madeline Bodin is a freelance environmental and science journalist based in Vermont.

The post A new freelance business works like a “dating app for fact-checking” 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.

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.

David Wolf has been an editor of the Long Read since the UK-based Guardian launched the section 10 years ago, and its top editor for the last four. The Long Read world sounds like a dream for those of us who love longform stories, and Wolf the kind of editor we want to write for.

For him, of course, the job comes with all the stresses of high-level editing, and an added challenge: The Long Read was launched as more and more publications were pulling back on their commitment to in-depth, literary journalism. Wolf and his team have to prove the value of such journalism with every story they publish.

Stress be damned. Wolf loves what he does. As he speaks to me on Zoom from his office in London, he can’t stop smiling. He gets to spend his days commissioning stories from talented print journalists from across the globe, then immerse himself in the creative work they produce.

“Hiroshima” author John Hersey was one of the earliest journalists to use the narrative writing techniques of fiction for his journalism as a way to allow “readers to witness history.” But perhaps journalism — and longform journalism, in particular, just like photojournalism — can go further. A well written piece, like the Guardian’s “How child labour in India makes paving stones beneath our feet,” goes beyond bearing witness; it provokes the reader’s empathy for those in the story.

This is the heart of why Wolf’s work at The Long Read matters. Change, after all, begins with seeing and hearing the other, whose reality is often far removed from ours, and feeling a sliver of what they might feel.

“I don’t tend to think about storytelling in terms of empathy,” Wolf says when I point that out. “But the human element of it rings true. I think empathy is a downstream effect of good writing. I think of it as the product of understanding and clarity. And that’s what’s at the forefront of my mind when I get a first draft and I’m editing it.

“If you write short pieces, you have to assume knowledge on the part of the reader,” he adds. “Whereas the foundation of everything we’re doing The Long Read is to assume the reader is an intelligent person who knows nothing about the subject, and we give them everything they need to know to fully understand the story. And a lot of this will be describing things in human terms. So, if you feel moved by it or understand the situation of people within the story, that’s the product of telling the story properly.”

The landscape of longform

Guardian is, of course, not the only publication to offer deep insights into the human experience. The New York Times Magazine, for example, or Harper’s, The Atlantic, Mother Jones, The Atavist, The New Yorker, Wired, Esquire and Politico, and in the UK, 1843 of The Economist, all publish longform journalism by some of the most sought-after journalists — even though the halcyon days of print magazine journalists like Hersey, Joan Didion and Gay Talese are long past. That’s because readers want human stories, Wolf tells me: “Stories that make sense of the world around us.”

Recent times in the print journalism industry has been dominated by downsizing, layoffs and closures in the English-speaking world alone. The climate is worse for journalism and journalists in Hungary, Hong Kong, Mexico, all over the Middle East, in the Philippines, Haiti, Zimbabwe and Russia.

And yet.

“We all have that thing,” Wolf says. “You’re casually doom scrolling on your phone and you’re seeing horrible thing after horrible thing, but the reality of it doesn’t come home to you. Good journalism — and it doesn’t have to be long — is about getting underneath the generic words that you’re used to seeing in the news.”

As an example, he cites endless news stories about corruption: “Everyone kind of knows what the word corruption means, but it’s also become meaningless. For most readers, including me, it’s a lot of half-understood stuff. I can give you an example of corruption, but I don’t necessarily feel it; I don’t necessarily have a really visceral sense of how devastating it can be — unless I’m engaging with it through a story. If you tell a story that says, ‘This is what corruption actually looks like,’ that’s different.”

Here, Wolf mentions a story from 2015 about a hospital in Ukraine. The story follows cancer patients who bribe doctors to get the cancer care they need. It also shows how, despite feeling compromised, doctors who accept these bribes don’t have much choice: They don’t make enough money to feed their families, or they have to pay their own bribes to teachers, tax officers and even plumbers. For the patient, the bribe means the hope of staying alive; for the doctor, it means putting food on the table. “That’s what corruption actually means,” Wolf says. “That’s when you start actually understanding.”

At its inception, The Long Read aimed to become the place for doing stories few other places in the UK were doing. Longform journalism is first and foremost an American phenomenon, and although it has’ existed in the UK for decades, not least in the pages of the Guardian, Wolf says, it was not as celebrated as on the other side of the ocean.

What it takes

Costs of such journalism is a real consideration.

First and foremost, there’s the cost to the writer. When I ask Wolf if a freelance journalist can survive on longform journalism alone, he shakes his head: “The question is, how big is your family trust fund? Because otherwise, it’s really, really hard.” The reality is that most freelance journalists who write longform need a second job. A few can supplement their income by writing nonfiction books, but the sometimes generous advances from publishers in the U.S. is rare in the UK.

And there’s the cost to the news organization to produce deeply reported longform journalism. “It takes a lot of time,” Wolf says. “It’s difficult to predict the results. You can have a great idea for a piece, you can have a great reporter looking into something, and maybe in the end it’s not going to be a good Long Read piece. Maybe it should be a 1,000-word piece, or maybe we shouldn’t do it at all. In a world where journalistic resources are scarce, I can understand why people would think, ‘Do I want to spend money on things that don’t have a set result?’” While The Long Read has the backing of the Guardian, Wolf and his team are careful about what they commission.

The Guardian Media Group has only one shareholder, The Scott Trust. The Trust’s goal is to ensure the Guardian’s financial and editorial independence in perpetuity. It invests its profits back into journalism, which is why the Guardian has been able to produce The Long Read section for 10 years now.

Wolf cited three pieces published between 2014 and 2017 that helped define The Long Read and grow its readership to a global one.

The first one was a 2014 story by Martin Chulov about the origins of ISIS. “It was just an amazing piece,” Wolf says. “He (Chulov) had incredible sources and was telling this urgent story in a way no one else had at that time. Then, seeing Jonathan Shainin, who was editor at the time, working on the story and bring it to its absolute best form was amazing, because I had recently arrived and I was learning a lot from him. The piece worked on all fronts: It was breaking news, it was globally read, but it was done in this unique way. It felt to me that the piece was kind of like ‘proof of concept’ — as in, it showed that The Long read  had been a good idea after all.”

Then, there was the 2015 story about “The Great British Bake Off” by Charlotte Higgins. A profile of a TV sensation, the piece set standards for culture writing in The Long Read.

Then there’s the 2017 piece by Sam Knight probing the cascade of security responses in the event of Queen Elizabeth’s death. It’s that piece, Wolf says, that established The Long Read on the global scene.

“That was by far our biggest one,” says Wolf. “I think it’s had 7 million hits in its lifetime, and after that, anyone who was interested in journalism in the UK and even globally, maybe, went, ‘Okay, the Guardian has this Long Read section.’”

Long Read’s reputation is defined by the quality of reporting, but also of writing. The latter starts in part with the relationship between journalist and editor. By the time they’ve done a couple of pieces together, Wolf likes to push his writers to go beyond their comfort zone. “If you’re a music journalist, and you’re good at that, you’re going to be good at writing about other things too,” he says. “And I always think, ‘Oh, I wonder how that person would do if they write about this other subject.’”

Defining great storytelling

The question remains, though: What characterizes good writing in longform journalism?

“I always struggle with defining what good storytelling is,” Wolf says. “There are so many components to it, and there’s not just one way. There are probably universals in good storytelling. But I can think of people who write so differently, and yet they are all brilliant storytellers.”

He cites a story he listened to rather than read, because Wolf loves audio versions of longform journalism, too. He and I take a moment to reminisce on the joys of the now defunct Audm, a longform-to-audio app that for years published audio versions of stories from dozens of publications, and where Wolf would sometimes discover journalists whose work he had never read before. (Full disclosure: The Audio Long Read podcast, a narrated version of The Long Read, is now my daily go-to. RIP, Audm.)

This particular story, though, Wolf listened to on NYT Audio, an app The New York Times established after it bought and cancelled Audm. The story, originally published in The New York Times Magazine, is a profile of sorts of Michael Stipe, the R.E.M. frontman and singer, and speaks of Stipe’s journey as he tries to put a solo album together. Written by Jon Mooallem, it reads like a dream.

“I’m not interested in Michael Stipe or R.E.M.,” Wolf says. “But this is a great example of a story that you love even if you’re not interested in the subject: It’s such a mixture of specificity about this very particular guy who’s had a totally unique life. But it’s also about good writing, in the sense that the more true you are to the specificity of his experience, the more universal it becomes. Stipe’s doubts and misgivings about the whole idea of creating art, the way he references a book about pretentiousness that he didn’t even read — all of these details.”

Wolf marvels at how much time Mooallem spent with Stipe: “For profiles for The Long Read, for instance, I’ll say to the writer, ‘Sure, let’s do this, but only if the subject is genuinely up for it.’ If the subject is reluctant and says, ‘Yeah, I can meet you for coffee,’ but they don’t seem to want to do more than that, and you will be pushing, pushing, pushing, then there’s just no point — it’s not going to be possible for the writer to do the kind of piece we’re aiming for. Obviously, it’d be different if you were writing about a politician or a powerful businessman. But when we’re writing about cultural figures like Paul Gilroy or Nina Gold, you want it to be a unique piece. It is very difficult to get people to agree to letting you spend meaningful time with them, and if they don’t, then we don’t write that profile.”

Along with profiles and original issues stories, The Long Read offers its platform to extracts of nonfiction book extracts and to stories that from smaller and less well-known publications, like n+1, or non-English-language newspapers, like NZZ. “It’s just a way of putting more good journalism in front of more people,” Wolf says.

Not on his radar: story ideas about America. “The U.S. is the most covered country in terms of longform journalism in the world,” Wolf says. “It’s not that it’s oversaturated — there are news deserts in America — but it’s by a factor of 100 the most covered country by journalists. Second, The Guardian US is a big operation now, and they have their own features strand. So, for most U.S.-based stories, if it seems like a good idea, I’d suggest the writer to get in touch with an editor at the Guardian US.”

This doesn’t mean Wolf doesn’t accept story ideas from U.S. journalists. “I always tell writers that we’re not really looking for stories about the U.S., but we’re happy to run stories from the U.S.,” he says. “We just published a story (about the science of death) by Alex Blasdel, an American writer, which is now one of our most widely read pieces ever. And we did another story that I love, by Jordan Kisner, about humanity’s long struggle with rats. Jordan is based in the U.S., and her reporting mainly took place in New York. But humanity’s struggle with rats is a global story.

“The key to all of this is the specific and the universal at the same time,” Wolf says. “It’s all about clarity, and making it engaging and telling the human story right. Every reader likes that.”

****

David Wolf is the editor of the Guardian Long Read. You can follow him on X (formerly Twitter) at @davidedgarwolf. Follow The Long Read at @gdnlongread.

* * *

Ania Hull is a multilingual editor, writer and journalist who writes about immigration, poverty, conservation and environmental justice. She is currently based in New Mexico.

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There are many worthy books about the narrative craft of great storytelling. But the story behind a story — the hurdles, dilemmas, ethical quandaries and logic puzzles invisible in a seamless final draft —can be the best (and most specific) teacher. These tales are the heart of a new craft book that itself has a poignant backstory: Its path to publication embodies the narrative arc.

“Stories Can Save Us” (University of Georgia Press, June 2024) is a collection of interviews with narrative journalists on their approach to the craft of true storytelling, often focused on a particular story rife with teachable moments. It is, in many ways, a fresh version of the 2006 “The New New Journalism,” which itself is an homage to “The New Journalism,” a 1975 anthology of classics edited by Tom Wolfe. This book captures a chorus of voices from contemporary masters, many of them familiar to Storyboard readers: Tom Junod, Pamela Coloff, Chris Jones, Rachel Monroe, Eli Saslow and others.  

The book was an outgrowth of “Gangrey the Podcast,” hosted and produced by Matt Tullis, a journalist, writer, teacher, coach and friend who loved talking about craft with other writers. 

Matt was earnest, kind, humble and generous in his support of the writing community. He asked terrifically specific questions about reporting and writing, gently guiding each writer through the journey of the story behind the story. I still assign these podcasts, along with the stories they dissect, in my graduate feature writing class.

Matt was diagnosed with leukemia as a child. He beat it and grew up to be an author, college professor and avid runner. He wrote a book, “Running With Ghosts,” about his battle with childhood cancer and the ghosts who accompanied him on his runs. He was putting the narrative anthology together two years ago when doctors found a new cancer — this one in his brain.

After brain surgery in September 2022, Matt posted a selfless selfie, smiling with a bandaged head and a positive outlook: “Got Wordle in Three!” I teased him about starting a new headwear trend.

The next day he was gone.

Matt left behind a wife and two kids and a lot of friends sucker-punched by the unfairness of his fate. He beat cancer. As a kid. It came back at 46. This isn’t how a good story should end.

But it didn’t end there. Not exactly.

Another great storyteller, ESPN senior writer Seth Wickersham, was a friend of Matt’s. He knew of Matt’s plans for the book and envisioned a way to realize that vision, amplifying Matt’s influence on the jouranlists of today and tomorrow.

“It needed to be out there to keep hope alive for the kinds of stories he loved, that we all love,” Wickerman said, “not only to help students and professionals, but as a prayer of sorts for that kind of work.”

With the blessing of Matt’s wife, Alyssa, Wickersham enlisted the help of other writers to get the book across the finish line. (None accepted payment for their work.) Wright Thompson, Justin Heckert and Michael Kruse interviewed other writers to complete the mix. Wickersham edited the manuscript and ghost-wrote an introduction in Matt’s voice, weaving thoughts that Matt had written or said before he died. Heckert memorialized Matt in a beautiful essay and came up with the book’s title — a quote Matt had tattooed on his arm.

Matt believed stories not only can save us, but make us immortal.

“If we tell enough stories,” Matt wrote, “we can all live forever.”

Proceeds from the sale of the book will benefit Matt’s wife and kids. It also will benefit those who read it, who will learn something useful and beautiful about the craft of story work. As a bonus, they’ll get to know the special man — and the writers he interviewed — immortalized in these pages.

* * *

Kim Cross is a freelance journalist and nonfiction author based in Boise, Idaho. Her new book, “In Light of All Darkness,” is about the FBI investigation of the 1993 Polly Klaas kidnapping.

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Steve Almond has lived many lives in pursuit of his most elusive dream: publishing a novel. He’s been an investigative journalist, tortured poet and author. Before he published “All the Secrets of the World” in 2022, he worked on five fiction manuscripts that did not find a public audience. For 30 years, he has published works of fiction and non-fiction and taught writing. He currently teaches narrative non-fiction writing at the Nieman Foundation at Harvard University, a course I attended as a 2023 Nieman Fellow.

The results of his efforts are described in his latest book, “Truth Is The Arrow, Mercy Is The Bow: A DIY Manual for the Construction of Stories.”

In it, Almond tackles many topics. Some are standard (character development, chronology). Others feel distinctly Almond (sex scenes, creative entitlement). Punctuated throughout are Almond’s experiences as a son, brother and father. While he draws from other writers, Almond takes almost masochistic delight in plumbing the depths of his own failures to illustrate different points about writing and creative decision making. Perhaps it’s his way of redeeming himself. And he understands that writing is an act of subjectivity: He wants to be honest about how he’s made his way.

When I asked Almond, after publishing his book, if he likes talking about his failures, he said he prefers it to “tooting his own horn.”

“I’m not interested in the social media posts that are like, ‘Look at this beautiful sunset. Look at this beautiful family. I finished my book. I got a big award.’ I personally can’t really participate in that other than by being envious or skeptical,” he told me. “But if somebody tells me they’re struggling or they screwed something up or they’re feeling doubt or uncertainty, I can participate in that all day.”

While Almond offers tips for all kinds of writers, here is his most useful advice for journalists and writers of narrative non-fiction, gleaned from his book and our conversation.

Drop the performance

Vanity is often the root cause of the ailments that afflict creatives, whether that’s writer’s block, overwrought metaphors or run-on sentences.

“All bad decisions at the keyboard arise from insecurity,” Almond writes in “Truth Is The Arrow.”

When self-doubt creeps in, writers begin making decisions to soothe their ego rather than to serve the story. Instead of having a crystal-clear idea of whom they are writing about, what motivates them, what sabotages them and if they can be redeemed, writers shackled by insecurity wind up overthinking their position in the universe of other writers. Almond writes that they become mired in self-serving questions like ‘Will this metaphor impress the reader? Am I smart enough to pull this off? Funny enough? Deep enough?’

When you begin performing for the reader, or other writers, the story suffers. And when you publish, the universe of writers escalates in noise but it doesn’t gain dimension.

There is much to gain when you drop the facade of “Serious Investigative Journalist” or “Great Chronicler Of The Human Condition.” Instead of miming other writers, you can become something no one else can fully ape: yourself.

“Voice is what emerges when you stop performing,” writes Almond. It’s “when your voice on the page flows from your voice off the page, its particular rhythms and vernacular and sensibility.”

Ideas, too, flow when you aren’t trying to mirror the work of others.

When you catch yourself preoccupied by what kind of article or book you should be writing, Almond writes that a more useful question to ask is What kind of article or book do I want to write?

Real curiosity and excitement lead to better questions, deeper inquiry and a richer story.

Own your writing decisions

In the Q&A section of his book, Almond admits he avoids telling people he is a writer. He prefers focusing instead on what he does. To that end, the term “word decider” feels more appropriate to him.

Almond’s preferred title underscores the fact that everything that shows up on the page or the screen is a personal choice made by the writer.

“Writing is decision-making,” he says in his book. “What word? Where to place the comma? How to shape the paragraph? Which characters to undress and in what manner? It’s relentless.”

Take chronology, for example. In his chapter on chronology, Almond poses two crucial and related questions for writers:

1. Where, in the larger flow of events, have I chosen to enter the story?
2. How did my central character arrive at this moment, and what’s at stake for her?

The same is true for characterization. Whether it’s indirect or direct, the facts we include in the description of a character, their life and their actions is a choice.

Almond goes even further, at one point, to say that storytelling is an act of seizure. When you write, you seize the right to share with the world your version of something that took place.

So make your writing decisions with intention. Whether you’ve decided to start a story with a childhood memory of the main character, or you’ve decided to include a description of how she styles her hair, it should be done with a purpose that feels obvious to the reader.

If you’re the one driving the story bus, set a course for an unforgettable destination, and invite the reader to join you by sharing the route you’re taking.

Tap into mercy

Most journalists and non-fiction writers can develop the skills to address the who, what, when, and where of a story. But often the trickiest question to answer is “Why?”

Answering the “why” of a story requires us to locate the motives of people we may not know or like.

It’s common to hear calls for empathy in journalism, which Lauren Kessler described in Nieman Storyboard in 2022, as “the ongoing challenge to try to understand another person’s point of view.”

But the word “empathy” only makes one appearance in Almond’s book. To him, the engine that powers understanding others is love. Love is expressed through writing when writers tap into mercy — to not just attempt to understand why someone acts a certain way, but to avoid issuing a verdict.

Almond is quick to clarify that writing mercifully doesn’t mean that you can’t arbitrate the truth of what someone has said. It also doesn’t mean that you grant your subjects moral absolution.

“Mercy is the bow and truth is the arrow,” Almond told me, echoing his book’s title. “Your intention is to travel as far into the truth as you can, which requires withholding judgment.

“That’s the best kind of journalism people can do,” he said. “It’s not designed to agitate or provoke or dig you deeper into whatever your dogma is. It’s actually supposed to morally complicate your worldview and make you feel like the person next to you has a rich, complex inner life that has something to do with yours.”

Documenting the lives of your subjects requires a commitment to telling the truth about them, Almond writes. And, he asks, “Is (your) compulsion to tell the truth stronger than (your) fear of the consequences?”

Telling the truth mercifully might require you to spend time understanding a person your readers disdain. In his book, Almond shares one of his favorite stories of how the novelist Claire Messud responded to a critic of her work. At the center of her 2014 novel, “The Woman Upstairs,” Messud constructed a bitter and furious protagonist named Nora. When Messud was asked by a critic if she would want to be friends with Nora, Messud dismissed the idea outright.

“If you’re reading to find friends, you’re in deep trouble,” Messud said. “We read to find life, in all its possibilities. The relevant question isn’t ‘Is this a potential friend for me?’ But ‘Is this character alive?’”

Messud’s story is a reminder, Almond writes, that your job isn’t to coddle your subjects or to present them in the most flattering light. It is to “witness and interrogate” who they are and what they do. Only then can you understand the “why” at the heart of their story.

* * *

Ruth Tam is a writer, illustrator and podcast host. A 2023 Nieman Fellow, her work has been published by NPR, The Washington Post and The New Yorker.

The post How to stop “performing” and write as only you can write appeared first on Nieman Storyboard.

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Jon Franklin, winner of two Pulitzer Prizes and an author and teacher who fomented the late-20th century revolution of literary journalism in American newspapers, died Jan. 21 in Annapolis, Maryland. He was 82.

Franklin died at Hospice of the Chesapeake after a Jan. 8 fall at home, said his wife, writer Lynn Franklin. In the past two years, he had undergone treatment for esophageal cancer.

From coast to coast for four decades, Jon Franklin’s byline heralded a new path for journalists seeking to create the art of real life. With his landmark 1986 book, “Writing for Story,” Franklin pushed news writers to seize the literary tools of Chekhov and Steinbeck and build “chronologies of meaning” on the foundation of newsgathering.

“Jon Franklin proved to a generation of journalists that good reporting could gain the power of literature,” said Roy Peter Clark, nationally renowned author and writing coach at the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Florida.

“Jon Franklin is a legend among my colleagues,” said Jack Hart, retired managing editor and writing coach at The Oregonian. “‘Writing for Story’ was a breakthrough that articulated for the first time a coherent strategy of how story theory applied to the world of nonfiction, and it forever changed the practice of journalism.”

Writer Adina Gewirtz of Silver Spring, Maryland, a longtime friend of the Franklins, said Franklin “changed my life, and I know I’m not the only one.”

“Jon wanted to be the teacher of a lifetime,” Gewirtz said. “He was passionate about the truth and the power of story to tell it, and he loved his students long after they’d left the classroom. We loved him back.”

Building an online community of nonfiction writers

In addition to his newspaper work and seven books, Franklin pioneered the internet’s potential for connection. In 1994, Jon and Lynn Franklin established the list serve WriterL, a virtual salon about literary journalism. Over 15 years, WriterL grew into a lively exchange that a New York Times story likened to Paris in the 1920s.

With Jon instigating and Lynn moderating WriterL, more than 400 writers and editors, many of them award-winning practitioners, worked over the big questions at the crossroads of art and daily journalism. What is the suspension of disbelief in nonfiction? When is the best use of the first person? How does a writer begin?

But one subject above all occupied WriterL: What is truth, anyway? Critics of the genre complain that literary journalists don’t let the facts get the way of a good story. In one typical response, Franklin countered that every word in a work of literary journalism arises from the reporter’s quest for the facts.

“You use the facts to find your point in the story. You report for story. The reason for the self-examination is so that you can take yourself out and in that way clear away some of the clutter in a perfectly legitimate fashion,” he wrote. “That is how you ‘service’ your point, except that it’s the story’s point. It’s the jewel you’ve done all your reporting for.”

In 2022, veteran editor Stuart Warner and the Franklins compiled a book of WriterL’s best threads. In his introduction to “A Place Called Writer,” Warner writes the book brings together “robust conversations about the art of nonfiction writing that may have taken place 15 or 20 years ago but are still relevant and enlightening to writers today.”

The “school” of Fitzgerald and Hemingway

A hard Oklahoma boyhood kept Franklin from pursuing the education to fulfill his dream of becoming a scientist. Instead, he enrolled in what he called the “universal school for writers” — the novels of Fitzgerald and Hemingway, and the short stories in the Saturday Evening Post and other popular magazines of postwar America.

The currents of science and literature carried Franklin to the Baltimore Evening Sun, where the science beat had sat open, ignored. Franklin claimed it and made it into a showcase of reader-pleasing narratives. In 1979, he earned the first Pulitzer Prize awarded for feature writing for “Mrs. Kelly’s Monster,” a story about a brain surgeon and his patient. In 1985, he earned the inaugural Pulitzer for explanatory journalism for “The Mind Fixers,” a seven-part chronicle on the dawn of molecular psychiatry.

Setting the bar in two Pulitzer categories established Franklin as a master of the craft, a sought-after teacher and speaker. “Mrs. Kelly’s Monster” rests at the cornerstone of journalism curricula nationwide. The tightly engineered medical narrative reminded reporters that readers love newspaper stories that make their hearts pound. Most prize-winning journalism since emulates the approach of “Mrs. Kelly’s Monster.”

“Jon Franklin fused the modern discipline of journalism with the ancient magic of storytelling to create a new literary genre capable of bridging the gap between the sciences and the humanities that has long divided mainstream culture,” said Seattle writer John Higgins, a Franklin student and friend of three decades.

Franklin then published his definitive how-to book, and its title baldly announced the contents: “Writing for Story: Craft Secrets of Dramatic Nonfiction By a Two-Time Pulitzer Prize Winner.” The book is his best seller and remains in print after nearly 40 years. In many writers’ libraries, “Writing for Story” is shelved between a dictionary and “The Elements of Style,” by William Strunk and E.B. White.

But Franklin’s book rarely stays on a writer’s shelf for long.

“I purchased the book shortly after it appeared, put its lessons into practice and can testify to its power,” writing teacher Chip Scanlan of the Poynter Institute wrote in 2019. “To prepare for a new writing project, I recently dove back into my copy. I was pleased to see that it was just as instructive and inspirational as I remembered.”

“The book certainly changed my outlook on the literature of fact,” said Jack Hart, who oversaw the work of five Pulitzer Prize winners at The Oregonian. For his own book, “Storycraft: The Complete Guide to Writing Narrative Nonfiction,” Hart said, “I quoted nobody more than Jon Franklin.”

Author Walt Harrington, a longtime Washington Post Magazine writer, University of Illinois journalism professor and WriterL member, said Franklin’s gift was tearing away the mystique about writing.

“ ’Writing for Story’ revolutionized newspaper feature journalism by establishing that the narrative arc of an unanswered thematic question to be answered at the end could drive nearly every feature story,” he said. “Tom Wolfe and the other historic New Journalists had implied it and illustrated it. But Jon made it a method that could be taught and replicated by mere mortals.”

Fighting back with words

Born Jan. 13, 1942, in Enid, Oklahoma, Jon Daniel Franklin was the first son of Wilma and Benjamin Max Franklin, an itinerant construction electrician who picked fights in honkytonks. But his father encouraged his son’s interest in writing.

In “Writing for Story,” Franklin writes of getting bullied as a teenager then talking all night with his father, who counseled fighting back with words. By dawn, “I had become a real grown-up revolutionary, and later we went out together, and he bought me a beat-up Underwood.”

Franklin rarely stayed in the same school for more than six weeks as the family moved around for his father’s work. He quit high school to join the Navy. His writing ability got him orders to All Hands magazine, the Navy’s glossy journal of profiles and photographs, published at the Pentagon.

There, Franklin learned journalism from seasoned editor G. Vern Blasdell, who delivered the hard basics like boot camp. Franklin sweated over each story to earn a mere nod from the demanding Blasdell until “the day finally came that he told me he could teach me no more,” Franklin wrote in “Writing for Story.” “I was as sad as I was the day he died a decade later.”

With the Vietnam War escalating, Franklin mustered out of the Navy after eight years, and the G.I. Bill allowed him to be the first in his family to go to college. He earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Maryland in 1970. He wrote first for the Prince George’s Post then for the Baltimore Evening Sun, once the home of legendary columnist H.L. Mencken.

In a newsroom, reporters compete fiercely for the high-visibility assignments in politics and sports. For Franklin, science was the only frontier worth patrolling. But to his eternal frustration, newspapers too often did the easy thing and celebrated the trivial.

Franklin the revolutionary needled editors for chasing bright shiny objects instead of stories of real life. Even more infuriating was the routine mishandling of science news that Franklin said contributed to the nation’s illiteracy about science, “nothing less than the deconstruction of the Enlightenment.”

After his second Pulitzer Prize, he moved into the classroom, first at what was then Towson State University then at the University of Maryland-Baltimore County, then at his alma mater where he became a full professor.

“It’s a hard road for people who are trying to write the true literature of what’s happening in society,” he told College Park magazine in 2001. “Are rock stars really our heroes? I don’t think so. They have their place, but they shouldn’t be the big story. The main event is life, and that’s the principle I want to make sure students are exposed to.”

Blunt story coaching

In Baltimore, Franklin met Lynn Scheidhauer, a writer at a local college, and they married in 1988. The next year, the Franklins went west for Jon to head the journalism program at Oregon State University. Later, he went to the University of Oregon to teach journalism and serve as director of creative writing.

Hart, the retired Oregonian editor, said Franklin was generous with time and praise “for those who he felt understood and supported the cause of bringing the storyteller’s craft to telling the tales of ordinary people facing the challenges of everyday life.”

When Tom Hallman Jr., was the police reporter for The Oregonian, he once drove three hours to Corvallis to present his work to the master. Hallman sweated as Franklin liberally applied the red pen.

“He offered no pep talk, no words of encouragement, just a blunt assessment: If you want to tell stories, you have study structure and do the work to learn story,” Hallman said. “I returned to my car, embarrassed. I could pretend I’d never came to meet Franklin. I could pretend he’d never marked up my work.”

Instead, Hallman dived into the discipline. “I began reporting differently, thinking not of the words on the page but the arc of the character and the story. When I started winning national feature awards, I’d get an email from Franklin. In time, I won all of them, including the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for feature writing. When it was announced, Franklin called to congratulate me, telling me I was now in the club.”

In 1998, Franklin was lured back into the newsroom. He and Lynn left Oregon for  North Carolina, where Jon became science writer for the News & Observer in Raleigh, then building a reputation as a writer’s paper.

In editor Trish Wilson, Franklin met his match. She had read “Writing for Story,” and she told a newsroom gathering that she was glad for a reporter who came with an instruction manual.

With Wilson editing, Franklin wrote “A Death in the Family,” a compelling, insightful drama about the scientists at the Duke Primate Center in Durham, North Carolina, who cared for the center’s colony of lemurs. Lynn Franklin said she considers that story her husband’s masterpiece.

Newsroom to classroom and back again

The Franklins aimed to retire in North Carolina with a succession of black standard poodles. But in 2001, the University of Maryland offered Jon Franklin an endowed position, the first Merrill Chair in Journalism. The Franklins moved once more, to a house in the pine woods of Sunderland, Maryland, just west of the Chesapeake Bay.

They had barely unpacked when one night in 2003, their poodle Sam barked them awake. The house was ablaze and filled with smoke from an electrical fire, and the Franklins fled with only the robes on their backs.

They spent two years rebuilding the house and their lives. Jon wrote about the fire in his 2009 study of the human-dog bond, “The Wolf in the Parlor: The Eternal Connection Between Humans and Dogs”:

“A wave of smoke washed over us; Sam sneezed, and I began to cough. Together, as if choreographed, we turned and walked back down the long driveway leaving the shouting men, the snaking hoses and collapsing walls behind. Lynn reached across Sam, who was trotting between us, and took my hand. I squeezed her fingers. Life would go on.”

From Oregon to North Carolina to Maryland, WriterL went on, too. The conversation started in 1994, when Jon Franklin asked Oregon State computer technologists to build a list serve. Soon, word spread about the rollicking, almost-daily online debates about writing with opinionated participants.

But after 15 years, the creation of the internet was in turn a victim of the internet. By 2009, social media had exploded, and WriterL’s threads got thinner and less frequent.

“It hurt to stop,” Lynn Franklin said. “It was a painful decision. People became like family.”

Even after his retirement from the University of Maryland in 2010, Franklin coached writers. In 2019, the Franklins moved to Annapolis. At his death, Jon Franklin was working on a memoir of his Oklahoma boyhood.

A lifetime of stories

In addition to “Writing for Story,” “The Wolf in The Parlor” and “A Place Called WriterL,” Franklin also wrote:

• “Guinea Pig Doctors: The Drama of Medical Research Through Self-Experimentation,” in 1984 with Dr. John Sunderland.
• “Shocktrauma: The Dramatic True Story of a Pioneering Hospital Team to Conquer the Most Lethal Killer of All,” with Alan Doelp, a 1985 work of dramatic nonfiction that was turned into a Canadian television film.
• “Not Quite A Miracle: Brain Surgeons and Their Patients on the Frontier of Medicine” in 1983, also with Doelp.
• “Molecules of the Mind: The Story of the Psychological Discovery that Changed the World,” a New York Times Notable Book of the Year in 1987.

Franklin received honorary degrees from the University of Maryland in 1981 and Notre Dame de Namur University in 1982. In 1985, the American Chemical Society bestowed on Franklin its James T. Grady Award, once given to Isaac Asimov. In 1986, Franklin was a semifinalist in NASA’s Journalist In Space program.

Survivors include his wife of 43 years, Lynn, of Annapolis, his daughter Catherine Franklin Abzug, and her husband Morty Abzug. Franklin’s parents and younger brother Douglas predeceased him.

Contributions in Jon Franklin’s name may be made to Hospice of the Chesapeake, Annapolis, Maryland.

* * *

Anne Saker is a retired newspaper journalist. Papers she reported for include the Raleigh (North Carolina) News & Observer, the (Portland) Oregonian and the Cincinnati Enquirer.

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