There’s a subgenre in first-person works of journalism in which the “I” is the reporter on the trail of a story. This sort of story offers readers a look at the reporter’s process and is often about the narrator’s efforts to get access in secretive situations. In this piece, Altman tells the tale of getting close to Site R, an underground government facility reputed to be the location from which the country would be governed if Washington were attacked. After his reporting, Altman receives e-mails from someone inside the facility—and finds himself part of an espionage investigation.

We liked that Altman tells his tale with the tone of someone recounting a good yarn around the dinner table. He has us, his dinner guests, leaning forward as we learn who is probably sending the e-mails.

At the bottom of the article’s page, you’ll find links to follow-up stories, from which you’ll learn more about the investigation.

Read “Chasing Shadows,” by Howard Altman

A woman working at a Chinese restaurant refuses a man’s pennies when he tries to pay his bill. The man is indignant; a circus act of politicians and community leaders follows. All express outrage and call for change (so to speak). Clearly there is more than just pennies at stake. Fernandez handles this weird story with deftness and voiciness; he winks at his readers, even as he tells the tale straight.

One day, Fernandez says, he got a puzzling media advisory from State Senator Ruben Diaz, announcing a press conference the following day. The event would address this issue of pennies. (It was as if, Fernandez says, Diaz expected everyone to know about it.) Not sure of a story but intrigued, Fernandez did a pre-interview with Wayne Jones, the indignant customer, and Fernandez and his editors decided to go ahead.

At the press conference he found a strange scene: a hullabaloo, a sense of Big Controversy, and a little Chinese takeout place, its usual customers coming and going. Fernandez wanted to capture this weird justaposition.

He wrote the story the same day, going for a chronological account, including detail he thought would best convey the scene and sense of things (the exact coins Jones used, the meal he ordered, the plastic cup of pennies, the legislator’s reference to "American currency," the Chinese woman in tears, and so on).

Fernandez says he’s a fan of kicker endings. When he left the event he didn’t know if he had the material for one. But he heard from the story’s photographer, who’d stayed on longer, that Jones had later apologized. He called Jones to get the details. And so the story ends in its rounded and snappy way.

Fernandez says he got more reaction to this story than to another recent piece, a follow-up to a much bigger news event, a Bronx fire that killed ten people.

Read “When Pennies Fail To Pay the Bill, a Bronx Man Pushes for Change,” by Manny Fernandez

The scene-writing is compelling in this tick-tock reconstruction of the experiences of the Virginia Tech class that lost the greatest number of people in the shooting. We found keeping track of all the characters a bit challenging—but the characters are well-rendered and three-dimensional. We particularly liked Hayasaki’s ending; it’s moving without being mawkish.

Read “A Deadly Hush in Room 211—Then the Killer Returned,” by Erika Hayasaki

Like “Thembi’s Diary”, this story takes us into its characters’ world without the use of a narrator. It’s an approach that can provide exceptional immediacy. In this piece, a soldier and his wife struggle to build a life after his return from the Iraq war.

We’ve read quite a lot of stories about PTSD; we thought this a particularly useful window on the disease, its costs to victims’ emotional well-being and their ability to function in society—as Anna Mohan, the soldier’s wife, notes so eloquently at the end of the piece.

Listen to “The Effects of War on the Homefront,” by Karen Brown

Finkel shows his knack, once again, for crafting newspaper stories with a writerly, particularly human point of view. He doesn’t just write technically compelling scenes; he lets his readers in on irony, wryness, attitude. We see the stance as daring, profound, even subversive, in the politically charged and deathly case of Iraq. His scenes get beyond much of the usual, upright reporting on the war (even that which is critical) by virtue of his human and original lens.

“A Grisly Problem, Grateful Iraqis and a Grim Outlook,” by David Finkel

This story reconstructs the experience of Johan Otter, who was attacked by a grizzly while hiking in Glacier National Park with his daughter. The first section tells the story of the attack and of Otter’s rescue. The second installment chronicles Otter’s recovery. Tom Curwen e-mailed us that his experience with the piece “convinces me that the salvation of newspapers lies in narratives.”

He wrote us that the online story package received more than 533,000 hits. The print version ran in the Chicago Tribune, The Seattle Times and six other papers. And: “I have received nearly 400 emails from readers. One was disappointed that the time sequence in the story jumped around so much. Another did not like it that the Times chose to publish the story 18 months after the attack itself. The rest were over-the-top with praise.”

Our favorites among the comments Curwen received: “I never buy papers during the week, but your piece in Sunday’s edition compelled me to buy Monday’s paper to read the rest of Johan and Jenna’s story.” And: “Please tell your editors that my entire household as well as half of all the passengers waiting at gate number 24 at the Oakland Airport yesterday were enraptured by the story, not just because of the drama but also for its spirit and sensitivity.”

Read “Attacked by a Grizzly,” by Thomas Curwen

Thembi Ngubane is one of the most compelling characters we’ve encountered in a nonfiction narrative. She is an exceptionally likable narrator, both open in her feelings and poised in her dignity. She is heroic in her approach to her disease and her relationships with those around her. Joe Richman, executive producer of Radio Diaries, gave Thembi a tape recorder in 2005, and for a year she kept an audio journal. All that tape was edited into a sequence of self-reflection and scenes. The piece is a model for effective sequencing in any work of narrative, for turning a mass of material into coherent, emotionally engaging and purposeful work.

Listen to “Thembi’s AIDS Diary,” by Thembi Ngubane

We admired the cinematic quality of this piece. Raghavan moves his lens from image to image, providing vivid concrete detail, at times moving in close, at other times stepping back for a wider view. We liked that he establishes the first person right away. Structurally, the piece begins in media res, then moves to background, then returns to the scene and continues chronologically (a typical and effective structure for article-length nonfiction narrative). In the second half he transcribes eerie dialogue captured by his tape recorder after the blast. The scenes following, and the piece as a whole, portray chaos, confusion and violence through deliberate and poised prose.

Read “In an Instant, a Junkyard of Humanity,” by Sudarsan Raghavan

This series was written and reported by Thomas Farragher and Patricia Wen. It recounts the experiences of a couple and their two sons. One son is straight, the other gay. Both marry during the same summer. Farragher and Wen follow the sons in their relationships and the parents in theirs and along the way provide insight into the challenges and appeal of this contested institution. Published in 2004, in the context of Massachusetts’ recently legalized gay marriage, the story carries social context that enriches—perhaps justifies—the highly personal content.

N.B.: Wen checked in with the brothers recently, and both couples are now parents.

Read “Best Men,” by Thomas Farragher and Patricia Wen

This piece is about guilt, loyalty and the relationship between ordinary Americans and soldiers fighting in Iraq. It’s also a good test case for the "It’s not about you" principle of first-person pieces. There’s a lot of self-referencing here, but we found Nusbaumer’s use of the "I" mostly effective (we might have cut the reference to his own tears). His stance is that of the average American; he’s pointing out sacrifice in a way that other pieces of this type often do in a more distanced way. He’s connecting the dots more explicitly. The writing at the sentence level is tight and crisp, which makes for a vivid read.

Read “Band of Brothers,” by Stewart Nusbaumer