Louise Kiernan Archives - Nieman Storyboard https://niemanstoryboard.org/authors/louise-kiernan/ Tue, 18 Mar 2025 15:39:20 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 https://niemanstoryboard.org/app/uploads/2024/02/cropped-NiemanFavicon-40x40.png Louise Kiernan Archives - Nieman Storyboard https://niemanstoryboard.org/authors/louise-kiernan/ 32 32 City, Regional Magazine Awards Announced https://niemanstoryboard.org/2015/06/02/city-regional-magazine-awards-announced/ Tue, 02 Jun 2015 14:25:26 +0000 https://niemanstoryboard.org/2015/06/02/city-regional-magazine-awards-announced/ If there’s anywhere that crime pays, it might be at this year’s National City and Regional Magazine Awards, where a majority of the winning stories, announced last night at the annual CRMA conference in Dallas, document murder, mayhem and bad policing. Texas Monthly dominated the CRMA contest, winning seven prizes, including four writing categories. Executive […]

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If there’s anywhere that crime pays, it might be at this year’s National City and Regional Magazine Awards, where a majority of the winning stories, announced last night at the annual CRMA conference in Dallas, document murder, mayhem and bad policing.

Texas Monthly dominated the CRMA contest, winning seven prizes, including four writing categories. Executive editor and Storyboard regular Pamela Colloff won the feature writing award for her profile of Michelle Lyons, a former spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice who had witnessed 278 executions.
“She cracked her window, grateful for the cool air on her face. Mornings, when her commute offered time to think back on everything she had seen at the Walls, were the hardest. She was flooded with memories from her time inside the Death House: of the conversations she had shared with particular inmates in the hours before they were strapped to the gurney; of the mothers, dressed in their Sunday best, who had turned out to attend their sons’ executions; of the victims’ families, their faces hardened with grief; of the sudden stillness that came over the prisoners soon after the lethal drugs entered their bloodstreams. She could still see some of these men—their chests expanding, their chins stiffening as they took their last breaths.”

The writer of the year honor went to Colloff’s colleague Michael Hall, who was cited for telling “illuminating stories with a voice that resonates.” Among those stories was this extensive investigation into the murder of three teenagers at a lake in Waco in 1982, told from the perspectives of five people involved in the case, including a patrol sergeant who arrived at the crime scene that day.
“Simons, walking among the bodies as he searched for clues, was shaken. Who would do something like this? And why? On instinct, he kept returning to Jill, who he sensed had been the main target. Standing over her, he felt overwhelmed by the evil that had befallen her.

Simons crouched down next to her lifeless body. ‘I don’t know what’s happened to you,’ he whispered in her ear, ‘but I promise you one thing. Whoever did it won’t just go to jail—he is going to pay for this. I promise you that this won’t be another unsolved murder case in Waco, Texas.'”

Also, Texas Monthly’s Sterry Butcher took the column-writing prize and the magazine was recognized for excellence in writing for its September 2014 issue.

Other reporting and writing standouts included Robert Sanchez, who earned the profile-writing award for his story in 5280 about an anti-gang activist whose life fell apart when he shot another man.
“He’s hunched at the shoulders; his face is drawn. His soft brown eyes belie his usual street confidence. He’s wearing his ball cap, a solid black T-shirt, and baggy black jeans he’d recently purchased for $10 at Walmart. He apologizes for his appearance, says he’s been living out of hotels since his release from jail, that the pressures have weighed heavily on him. He’s worried about paying his bills, about a potential prison sentence, about his four children, about the bangers from his old ’hood who would love to even the score from behind the barrel of a semiautomatic. ‘In a week’s time—in a second’s time—I became jobless, homeless, and I’m on the run,” he tells me. ‘I can’t go back to my community.’”

Los Angeles magazine won four awards, including the reporting prize for Celeste Fremon’s examination of the LA Sheriff’s Department in “The Downfall of Sheriff Baca.” The civic journalism honor went to David Bernstein and Noah Isackson of Chicago magazine for their ongoing investigation into the Chicago Police Department’s manipulation of violent crime statistics. And Boston magazine, recognized for general excellence, also took the essays and commentary category for a piece by Jennifer Roberts about growing up black in the Irish, mob-ridden Boston neighborhood known as Southie.
“What was clear to me, even as a little girl, was that my mother wanted no part of our shared racial heritage. The bubble of denial she created for herself was solid Teflon. Everything rolled right off of her and onto me. At home, I was Irish. On the street, I was something different: “jigaboo,” “nigger,” “Oreo,” “Jenny the spook.” These names were spoken to me almost as if they were endearments, nicknames. Nearly everyone in Southie had a nickname.

I was from Southie; I was one of them. I was their black girl.”

For the full list of CRMA winners, go here.

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Louise Kiernan
Memorial Day Reading List https://niemanstoryboard.org/2015/05/22/memorial-day-reading-list/ Fri, 22 May 2015 13:49:39 +0000 https://niemanstoryboard.org/2015/05/22/memorial-day-reading-list/ It’s easy to forget, amid all the cookouts and trips to the beach, that Memorial Day was created to remember the men and women who have died in military service. In honor of the holiday, we’ve gathered a few outstanding stories about wars and the soldiers who fight them: “The Other Walter Reed,” Dana Priest and […]

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It’s easy to forget, amid all the cookouts and trips to the beach, that Memorial Day was created to remember the men and women who have died in military service. In honor of the holiday, we’ve gathered a few outstanding stories about wars and the soldiers who fight them:

“The Other Walter Reed,” Dana Priest and Anne Hull, Washington Post. 2007. A searing investigation into the treatment of veterans at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, this project prompted public outcry, spurred federal reforms and received the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for public service.
“Behind the door of Army Spec. Jeremy Duncan’s room, part of the wall is torn and hangs in the air, weighted down with black mold. When the wounded combat engineer stands in his shower and looks up, he can see the bathtub on the floor above through a rotted hole. The entire building, constructed between the world wars, often smells like greasy carry-out. Signs of neglect are everywhere: mouse droppings, belly-up cockroaches, stained carpets, cheap mattresses.

This is the world of Building 18, not the kind of place where Duncan expected to recover when he was evacuated to Walter Reed Army Medical Center from Iraq last February with a broken neck and a shredded left ear, nearly dead from blood loss. But the old lodge, just outside the gates of the hospital and five miles up the road from the White House, has housed hundreds of maimed soldiers recuperating from injuries suffered in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

“Black Hawk Down,” Mark Bowden, Philadelphia Inquirer, 1997. Before there was the Ridley Scott film or the best-selling book, there was the 29-part newspaper series documenting an attempt by American forces to capture the lieutenants of a Somali militia leader which, instead, erupted into the biggest firefight involving American soldiers since Vietnam.
“STAFF SGT. Matt Eversmann’s lanky frame was fully extended on the rope for what seemed too long on the way down. Hanging from a hovering Blackhawk helicopter, Eversmann was a full 70 feet above the streets of Mogadishu. His goggles had broken, so his eyes chafed in the thick cloud of dust stirred up by the bird’s rotors.

It was such a long descent that the thick nylon rope burned right through the palms of his leather gloves. The rest of his Chalk, his squad, had already roped in. Nearing the street, through the swirling dust below his feet, Eversmann saw one of his men stretched out on his back at the bottom of the rope.

He felt a stab of despair. Somebody’s been shot already! He gripped the rope hard to keep from landing on top of the guy. It was Pvt. Todd Blackburn, at 18 the youngest Ranger in his Chalk, a kid just months out of a Florida high school. He was unconscious and bleeding from the nose and ears.

The raid was barely under way, and already something had gone wrong. It was just the first in a series of worsening mishaps that would endanger this daring mission. For Eversmann, a five-year veteran from Natural Bridge, Va., leading men into combat for the first time, it was the beginning of the longest day of his life.”

“Generation Kill,” Evan Wright, Rolling Stone, 2004. Wright spent two months embedded with U.S. Marines during the invasion of Iraq in 2003. His three-part series, which won a National Magazine Award for excellence in reporting, was later adapted into a book and an HBO miniseries. 
“Culturally, these Marines would be virtually unrecognizable to their forebears in the “Greatest Generation.” They are kids raised on hip-hop, Marilyn Manson and Jerry Springer. For them, “motherfucker” is a term of endearment. For some, slain rapper Tupac is an American patriot whose writings are better known than the speeches of Abraham Lincoln. There are tough guys among them who pray to Buddha and quote Eastern philosophies and New Age precepts gleaned from watching Oprah and old kung fu movies. There are former gangbangers, a sprinkling of born-again Christians and quite a few guys who before entering the Corps were daily dope smokers; many of them dream of the day when they get out and are once again united with their beloved bud.

These young men represent what is more or less America’s first generation of disposable children. More than half of the guys in the platoon come from broken homes and were raised by absentee, single, working parents. Many are on more intimate terms with video games, reality TV shows and Internet porn than they are with their own parents. Before the “War on Terrorism” began, not a whole lot was expected of this generation other than the hope that those in it would squeak through high school without pulling too many more mass shootings in the manner of Columbine.”



There are many other excellent examples of writing about war and its aftermath, some of which we’ve previously highlighted on Storyboard. Esquire writer Chris Jones discussed “The Things That Carried Him,” his 2008 story about the return of one soldier’s body from Iraq, during a visit to Lippmann House in 2011. And Washington Post national enterprise editor David Finkel spoke to the most recent class of Nieman Fellows in October about his two books documenting the experiences of an infantry battalion in Iraq and upon their return home.

What stories would you add to our list? Tweet to @niemanstory.


 

 

 

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Louise Kiernan
Annotation Live! The New Yorker’s Evan Osnos and Richard M. Daley https://niemanstoryboard.org/2015/05/15/annotation-live-the-new-yorkers-evan-osnos-and-richard-m-daley/ Fri, 15 May 2015 15:48:37 +0000 https://niemanstoryboard.org/2015/05/15/annotation-live-the-new-yorkers-evan-osnos-and-richard-m-daley/ If you’re read the most recent Storyboard feature for the Nieman Reports magazine — and, if you haven’t, here it is — you may know that narrative is increasingly taking to the stage and streets as journalism goes live to connect in new ways with its audiences. Storyboard just joined that phenomenon ourselves when, last weekend, […]

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If you’re read the most recent Storyboard feature for the Nieman Reports magazine — and, if you haven’t, here it is — you may know that narrative is increasingly taking to the stage and streets as journalism goes live to connect in new ways with its audiences. Storyboard just joined that phenomenon ourselves when, last weekend, we presented our first live version of the popular Annotation Tuesday feature from our website.

The annotation was part of the program for a conference in Chicago on covering the 2016 presidential campaign, co-hosted by the Nieman Foundation and the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics. If you weren’t at the event in Chicago or couldn’t watch the live feed on Periscope, we’ve got good news: the video version of the annotation is here.

In keeping with the conference theme, we went in search of a political story with strong narrative elements and quickly chose the landmark profile of former Chicago mayor Richard M. Daley by Evan Osnos of The New Yorker. Osnos won the 2014 National Book Award in non-fiction for his book about the modernization of China,  Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New Chinaand, yes, he reported the Daley profile from his former base in Beijing (he now writes for the magazine from Washington, D.C.). We selected this article in part because, aside from its sophisticated storytelling, it poses a dilemma faced by reporters in every genre: how do you write about someone that everyone thinks they already know?

To answer that question and many others, Osnos joined Nieman Fellow Dawn Turner Trice, a columnist for the Chicago Tribune, for a discussion that touched upon everything from The New Yorker’s famed penchant for detail to what he regrets he didn’t include in the story. To read the profile before you watch the annotation, click here.

 



Nieman Storyboard: Live Annotation from Nieman Foundation on Vimeo.

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Louise Kiernan
A Conversation with Pulitzer Prize Winner Diana Marcum https://niemanstoryboard.org/2015/04/30/a-conversation-with-pulitzer-prize-winner-diana-marcum/ Thu, 30 Apr 2015 12:39:03 +0000 https://niemanstoryboard.org/2015/04/30/a-conversation-with-pulitzer-prize-winner-diana-marcum/

Diana Marcum is the first to acknowledge that her path to a Pulitzer Prize may be an unexpected one.

"My parents died when I was young. I didn’t get through college. I didn’t have any of the right credentials," she says. "But I could write. People seemed to think I could write."

That certainly was the judgment of the Pulitzer Prize Board, which last week awarded her the 2015 prize for feature writing for her series of stories in the Los Angeles Times about the impact of the drought on people living in California's Central Valley.

[caption id="attachment_119730" align="alignleft" width="150"]Diana Marcum Diana Marcum[/caption]

Marcum, 52, had freelanced for the Los Angeles Times on and off for years before being hired as a staff writer in 2011. She covers the 900-square-mile Central Valley for the newspaper and pursued the drought stories in between chasing fires and the other news a beat reporter has to manage. And while she and photographer Michael Robinson Chavez knew from the beginning that they wanted to explore the impact of the drought in a serious and sustained way, the series never carried the self-important imprint of a capital-P "Project." The pair just went out, looked for stories and found them.

She wrote the pieces late at night at her dining-room table, fueled by Diet Coke and a copy of John Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath," a gift from her editor that she set out to remind herself of the stakes of doing her subject justice.

We talked by phone as Marcum sat on her front porch in Fresno, where our conversation was momentarily interrupted by the arrival of a congratulatory bouquet of flowers and Marcum's friendly chat with her mail carrier, whom she knows by name. What follows is an edited and condensed transcript.

How did the drought stories come about?

I cover the Central Valley. I live here, and where the drought was hitting wasn’t the city. It was out in the little towns and the farms, way far off the road. You can’t just go around and knock on doors. It’s pretty hard to just find the doors. This was an area where life is hard and people are incredibly resilient and there’s just these stories of just trying to make your way in the world. Little stories that fascinate me. I mean they’re not little stories, but they’re little-told stories.

I had already been driving around and going to all these little places because we were thinking about doing a series of stories on people who were hungry in the middle of the bread basket. And then we started seeing the drought hit. And remember, these stories were written about a year before anybody was paying attention to the drought. So that was how it started. We just started talking to people and seeing where the drought was hitting and it was in pockets. Like you could even go to a town, and you could talk to the first people you saw and they’d say, “Oh we’ve been fine, we all found jobs, we’re still farming.” But it’s because of California’s weird water rights, right? You could go three blocks away and there was a whole neighborhood of people out of work. So you had to really, really look.

You and the photographer, Michael Robinson Chavez, had envisioned from the beginning that it would be a series. Did you think of it in any more specific terms than that?

We started with the most vulnerable. We started with the farm workers who didn’t have papers. We did that story. And then, oh my goodness, you know, this is so much worse than we realized. And then we just kind of worked our way up. We started with the farm worker, then we did the small farmer. By then, a whole entire town was out of water. So we went there and then the land was sinking, so we found a small town where the land was sinking. It was always just kind of following the journalism gods.

These people are in really difficult circumstances but they opened up to you. How did you gain their trust?

We just go out and make friends. It takes a little bit of time. We hang out, we just sort of invite ourselves in, and we eat samosas with the Singh family, and say, “Oh, can we look at your almond tree?” And we do a lot of listening, maybe to things that would never end up in the story. People really want to talk, you know. I mean we all do. You know when you find someone that will really listen to you, most people appreciate that opportunity. I know I do.

[caption id="attachment_119733" align="aligncenter" width="545"]This image of farm worker Hector Ramirez ran with the first story in the series. Photo by Michael Robinson Chavez/ Los Angeles Times. This image of farm worker Hector Ramirez ran with the first story in the series. Photo by Michael Robinson Chavez/ Los Angeles Times.[/caption]

Talk a little bit more about your relationship with your photographer. It sounds like you were together on this from the get-go.

Oh yeah, very much so. He’s very well-traveled, and he loves food, and he’s just charming. So he’s very good at talking to people, striking up a conversation. You know, if they’re from Yemen, he covered a story in their hometown. He always seems to have some touchstone with people, which is really handy. And I think he’s the more driven one of us. He’s the more, “Oh this is a national news story, this is gonna be a series.” And I’m more the writer, just kind of feeling it out as I go and thinking about exactly what’s in front of me in that moment. I think we make a good team.

I think that the other thing that’s kind of interesting about us working together is that our stuff doesn’t match. We work together in that we’re finding the people and figuring out the stories, but we’re not the kind of team where we’re telling the same story. There’s always some quirky side element to his photographs. I mean, you’ll see the certain farmer leaning on the fence and the dry landscapes, but there’ll always be a kid in the corner playing the trumpet or something. Which is I think pretty much how I write. So it’s interesting when I finally see his pictures and he finally sees my stories, and we saw such different things, but we saw the same overall story.

Walk me through the reporting process. How long were you out in the field? How long did the stories take to write? What were some of the challenges putting it together?

I think that where most of the time gets used is walking around and just talking to people. It’s interesting because I don’t know when I’m talking to people a lot of the time that that’s going to be part of the story. I find that what’s in my notebook is not what goes in the story. There’s like some back part of my brain that’s videotaping everything we do and later on, those are the things that I suddenly realize are key when you start putting it together in your mind.

How long did it typically take you to write a story?

Central Valley is my beat, and we were keeping it to ourselves that we had some grander vision. So we had not a lot of time to work on them. I would say a couple of weeks maybe.

So it’s not as though someone was saying to you, an editor was saying, “Go off for six months, Diana, and tell the story of the drought."

No, not at all. I was covering fires and everything else. We still had our regular work to do. Which I kind of like, you know? I mean it’s so exciting winning the Pulitzer… I just wasn’t sure how a newspaper reporter who covers 900 square miles on top of trying to do this would ever compete with magazine writers that have a whole year to work on a story. So secretly I’m kind of jazzed.

The stories are very highly focused, without a lot of outside experts or data, etc. Did you have to fight for that approach?

Well, these stories ran in Column One. And Column One is this tradition at the Los Angeles Times. I’ve been reading it since I was a child. So there’s always been a place on the front page of the Los Angeles Times for stories that were quirky or sad or just full of humanity, just full of life. Just stories that were interesting to read. I think that we’ve not even ever defined it any more narrowly than that because we want them to run the gamut, right? I mean, they just have to be interesting. They have to be special. They have to be different. And that’s it. Just have at it, you know?

The LA Times has this umbrella that allows storytelling. I mean real storytelling, where you take somebody into a world and keep them there from the beginning to the end, and the main thing is about the characters and the feelings. And now it’s not like you’re going to be telling a story and then interrupt yourself and say, “Oh, and let me explain the history of almonds in California.” It breaks things up. That’s why it doesn’t work if too many fingers get in the pie. And I’m not talking about the paper I’m at now. I think that any feature writer has been through that thing where they start deciding they need two graphs of this and three graphs of that. And the story gets lost.

What was the editing process like?

It’s a dream. It’s just a dream, a dream come true. When you finally, finally meet somebody who’s like-minded. Kari Howard is the Column One editor. I’m a state reporter so it goes through the regular editing process with Steve Clow. He’s the state editor. He’s more hard-news minded. So he’s looking for facts, kicking the tires, which is great. And then it goes to Kari. And we’re reading the lines out loud, and we’re weighing connotations… We’re having a very back-and-forth conversation. It’s not that kind of editing where, “Oh, here’s my changes. Take a look and see what you think.” It’s like, “Well, I think you’re missing a beat here… Oh I see what you’re saying. Why don’t we move this line here? Oh yeah, we did that, but do you think we have too much of this?”

It’s very back and forth. We’re almost like those chipmunks from the Disney cartoons, you know? It’s very respectful and very warm, and we’ve developed a friendship from working together on so many stories. So we can almost complete each other’s sentences at this point. And sometimes if something isn’t working, we’ll say, “Let’s take a pass at this and see what you have.” And we’ll come back the next day and find out we changed the exact same things.

What did change in the stories and what didn’t, from start to finish?

Well, the leads and the ends hardly changed. I mean if you have your beginning and your end, sometimes, things move around in the middle in service of those two things. But as long as you know for sure this is where we have to start and this is where we have to end, then you’re home.

Do you start with the beginning or do you start with the end or do you start somewhere in between?

Ugh, it’s really my weak point. But I start at the beginning and I go to the end. Certainly, when I was a younger reporter, and editors are trying to hurry you up, and they always say, “If you don’t have your lead, just go write something else.” No.

You know, I have to have the blank page, and I can’t do anything until I have my lead. I have to really believe in the lead to at least get everything else on paper. Even if it changes later, you know? I’m not suggesting it for other writers, but for me personally, I’m a top-to-bottom kind of person.

One of the things I thought was really striking about these stories was the use of detail and imagery. For example, there’s a line in one story, about two girls, “a tangle of giggles.” I would love to hear about your process. Do you just see those things and put them in your notebook? Do you have to work at it?

I’m a night owl. So I’m usually writing at two o’clock in the morning with a Diet Coke, you know, getting a little punchy. And I’m usually playing the scenes in my mind. I’m seeing things. I’m kind of replaying. I’m watching what happened in my head. And a lot of times what ends up in the story is not what ended up in my notebook. I think it comes more from those mental images. And I was thinking about Francisco’s daughters, and I just typed “a tangle of giggles.” I just typed it. And I remember it just came out of nowhere. I remember feeling delighted. You know that feeling like, “Oh! I like that.”

There are some light moments in these stories, too.

Always.

Why do you feel it was important to include those?

I think my overall purpose was to introduce people to each other, to let them get to know one another. And I think how we bond with each other is through laughter. Like, the people we like to be with are the people whose sense of humor we share. I mean that’s how you make friends with people, like when you’re traveling. If you can share a little laugh with someone, that’s what breaks the ice and makes you feel a little comfortable.

There’s a saying. I don’t remember who said it, but my dad used to say it a lot: “Angels can fly if they take themselves lightly.” I think that’s true for a story, too. When you’re talking about something that’s very wrenching and has a lot of pathos, if it’s just all the grit and despair, it’s not servicing telling the reality because the kind of people that I’m writing about are very resilient, and they have humor. And there’s something to be admired there. And it usually comes through in the lighter moments. And you don’t care as much about the dark unless there’s at least a little pinpoint of light.

[caption id="attachment_119734" align="aligncenter" width="620"]Pistachio farmer Fred Lujan   struggled to keep his trees alive. Photo by Michael Robinson Chavez/Los Angeles Times Pistachio farmer Fred Lujan struggled to keep his trees alive. Photo by Michael Robinson Chavez/Los Angeles Times[/caption]

I described the stories as quiet because they feel understated. There are moments, like when Fred Lujan starts crying, that other writers might have been tempted to really blow out or overdramatize. But you didn’t feel the need to gussy it up.

Oh, God no. Well, extraneous things never add power. Power comes from essence, right?

What was the moment like when you heard you had won the Pulitzer Prize?

When they said my name, I just did that thing you do when you’re a kid. I closed my eyes to make sure I wasn’t dreaming. Because when you’re a kid and you want to check if something’s real, you know how you just close your eyes for a minute? And then it was a whirl and I was happy and there were speeches and there was champagne.

Why do you think these particular stories resonated both with the Pulitzer Board and readers?

I’m of a divided mind on that. Because I always worry that no one’s going to be interested in reading them. You could argue that nothing happens. I mean my editor Davan [Los Angeles Times editor-in-chief Davan Maharaj] — his favorite story in the series is the one with the farmer who gives the water to his neighbors. And he says it’s his favorite story where nothing happens. So I guess there’s a part of me that always expects, and always does get some of those letters saying, “What’s this doing on the front page?” And then they’ll run down the list of news that day that they find far more important. I don’t know why it resonated, but I feel that it’s such a validation of this writing that it did. It just makes me so happy to think that there are stories whose main purpose is just to introduce people and make them understand a certain way of life or make them feel like they know this person.

That’s narrative, right? That’s what narrative does.

Right, exactly. That’s what narrative does. So at least this kind of narrative. Even though they’re very sad stories and very tragic circumstances, people will write me and say, “You know, I was having such a bad day, and then I read about this guy. And it made me want to do something kind for someone.” I get these “Thank you for the story” notes. And I am really the wrong person to be thanking; I’m just telling the story. But you get the privilege of being the go-between, of saying, “Hey, this is part of the world too.” If we only write about the bad, that’s not a complete picture.There is a lot of perseverance and faith and friendship and humor. There’s everything. It’s a big, complex world of good and bad. And the good counts.

 

 

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Diana Marcum is the first to acknowledge that her path to a Pulitzer Prize may be an unexpected one.

"My parents died when I was young. I didn’t get through college. I didn’t have any of the right credentials," she says. "But I could write. People seemed to think I could write."

That certainly was the judgment of the Pulitzer Prize Board, which last week awarded her the 2015 prize for feature writing for her series of stories in the Los Angeles Times about the impact of the drought on people living in California's Central Valley.

[caption id="attachment_119730" align="alignleft" width="150"]Diana Marcum Diana Marcum[/caption]

Marcum, 52, had freelanced for the Los Angeles Times on and off for years before being hired as a staff writer in 2011. She covers the 900-square-mile Central Valley for the newspaper and pursued the drought stories in between chasing fires and the other news a beat reporter has to manage. And while she and photographer Michael Robinson Chavez knew from the beginning that they wanted to explore the impact of the drought in a serious and sustained way, the series never carried the self-important imprint of a capital-P "Project." The pair just went out, looked for stories and found them.

She wrote the pieces late at night at her dining-room table, fueled by Diet Coke and a copy of John Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath," a gift from her editor that she set out to remind herself of the stakes of doing her subject justice.

We talked by phone as Marcum sat on her front porch in Fresno, where our conversation was momentarily interrupted by the arrival of a congratulatory bouquet of flowers and Marcum's friendly chat with her mail carrier, whom she knows by name. What follows is an edited and condensed transcript.

How did the drought stories come about?

I cover the Central Valley. I live here, and where the drought was hitting wasn’t the city. It was out in the little towns and the farms, way far off the road. You can’t just go around and knock on doors. It’s pretty hard to just find the doors. This was an area where life is hard and people are incredibly resilient and there’s just these stories of just trying to make your way in the world. Little stories that fascinate me. I mean they’re not little stories, but they’re little-told stories.


I had already been driving around and going to all these little places because we were thinking about doing a series of stories on people who were hungry in the middle of the bread basket. And then we started seeing the drought hit. And remember, these stories were written about a year before anybody was paying attention to the drought. So that was how it started. We just started talking to people and seeing where the drought was hitting and it was in pockets. Like you could even go to a town, and you could talk to the first people you saw and they’d say, “Oh we’ve been fine, we all found jobs, we’re still farming.” But it’s because of California’s weird water rights, right? You could go three blocks away and there was a whole neighborhood of people out of work. So you had to really, really look.

You and the photographer, Michael Robinson Chavez, had envisioned from the beginning that it would be a series. Did you think of it in any more specific terms than that?

We started with the most vulnerable. We started with the farm workers who didn’t have papers. We did that story. And then, oh my goodness, you know, this is so much worse than we realized. And then we just kind of worked our way up. We started with the farm worker, then we did the small farmer. By then, a whole entire town was out of water. So we went there and then the land was sinking, so we found a small town where the land was sinking. It was always just kind of following the journalism gods.

These people are in really difficult circumstances but they opened up to you. How did you gain their trust?

We just go out and make friends. It takes a little bit of time. We hang out, we just sort of invite ourselves in, and we eat samosas with the Singh family, and say, “Oh, can we look at your almond tree?” And we do a lot of listening, maybe to things that would never end up in the story. People really want to talk, you know. I mean we all do. You know when you find someone that will really listen to you, most people appreciate that opportunity. I know I do.

[caption id="attachment_119733" align="aligncenter" width="545"]This image of farm worker Hector Ramirez ran with the first story in the series. Photo by Michael Robinson Chavez/ Los Angeles Times. This image of farm worker Hector Ramirez ran with the first story in the series. Photo by Michael Robinson Chavez/ Los Angeles Times.[/caption]

Talk a little bit more about your relationship with your photographer. It sounds like you were together on this from the get-go.

Oh yeah, very much so. He’s very well-traveled, and he loves food, and he’s just charming. So he’s very good at talking to people, striking up a conversation. You know, if they’re from Yemen, he covered a story in their hometown. He always seems to have some touchstone with people, which is really handy. And I think he’s the more driven one of us. He’s the more, “Oh this is a national news story, this is gonna be a series.” And I’m more the writer, just kind of feeling it out as I go and thinking about exactly what’s in front of me in that moment. I think we make a good team.

I think that the other thing that’s kind of interesting about us working together is that our stuff doesn’t match. We work together in that we’re finding the people and figuring out the stories, but we’re not the kind of team where we’re telling the same story. There’s always some quirky side element to his photographs. I mean, you’ll see the certain farmer leaning on the fence and the dry landscapes, but there’ll always be a kid in the corner playing the trumpet or something. Which is I think pretty much how I write. So it’s interesting when I finally see his pictures and he finally sees my stories, and we saw such different things, but we saw the same overall story.

Walk me through the reporting process. How long were you out in the field? How long did the stories take to write? What were some of the challenges putting it together?

I think that where most of the time gets used is walking around and just talking to people. It’s interesting because I don’t know when I’m talking to people a lot of the time that that’s going to be part of the story. I find that what’s in my notebook is not what goes in the story. There’s like some back part of my brain that’s videotaping everything we do and later on, those are the things that I suddenly realize are key when you start putting it together in your mind.

How long did it typically take you to write a story?

Central Valley is my beat, and we were keeping it to ourselves that we had some grander vision. So we had not a lot of time to work on them. I would say a couple of weeks maybe.

So it’s not as though someone was saying to you, an editor was saying, “Go off for six months, Diana, and tell the story of the drought."

No, not at all. I was covering fires and everything else. We still had our regular work to do. Which I kind of like, you know? I mean it’s so exciting winning the Pulitzer… I just wasn’t sure how a newspaper reporter who covers 900 square miles on top of trying to do this would ever compete with magazine writers that have a whole year to work on a story. So secretly I’m kind of jazzed.

The stories are very highly focused, without a lot of outside experts or data, etc. Did you have to fight for that approach?

Well, these stories ran in Column One. And Column One is this tradition at the Los Angeles Times. I’ve been reading it since I was a child. So there’s always been a place on the front page of the Los Angeles Times for stories that were quirky or sad or just full of humanity, just full of life. Just stories that were interesting to read. I think that we’ve not even ever defined it any more narrowly than that because we want them to run the gamut, right? I mean, they just have to be interesting. They have to be special. They have to be different. And that’s it. Just have at it, you know?

The LA Times has this umbrella that allows storytelling. I mean real storytelling, where you take somebody into a world and keep them there from the beginning to the end, and the main thing is about the characters and the feelings. And now it’s not like you’re going to be telling a story and then interrupt yourself and say, “Oh, and let me explain the history of almonds in California.” It breaks things up. That’s why it doesn’t work if too many fingers get in the pie. And I’m not talking about the paper I’m at now. I think that any feature writer has been through that thing where they start deciding they need two graphs of this and three graphs of that. And the story gets lost.


What was the editing process like?

It’s a dream. It’s just a dream, a dream come true. When you finally, finally meet somebody who’s like-minded. Kari Howard is the Column One editor. I’m a state reporter so it goes through the regular editing process with Steve Clow. He’s the state editor. He’s more hard-news minded. So he’s looking for facts, kicking the tires, which is great. And then it goes to Kari. And we’re reading the lines out loud, and we’re weighing connotations… We’re having a very back-and-forth conversation. It’s not that kind of editing where, “Oh, here’s my changes. Take a look and see what you think.” It’s like, “Well, I think you’re missing a beat here… Oh I see what you’re saying. Why don’t we move this line here? Oh yeah, we did that, but do you think we have too much of this?”

It’s very back and forth. We’re almost like those chipmunks from the Disney cartoons, you know? It’s very respectful and very warm, and we’ve developed a friendship from working together on so many stories. So we can almost complete each other’s sentences at this point. And sometimes if something isn’t working, we’ll say, “Let’s take a pass at this and see what you have.” And we’ll come back the next day and find out we changed the exact same things.

What did change in the stories and what didn’t, from start to finish?

Well, the leads and the ends hardly changed. I mean if you have your beginning and your end, sometimes, things move around in the middle in service of those two things. But as long as you know for sure this is where we have to start and this is where we have to end, then you’re home.

Do you start with the beginning or do you start with the end or do you start somewhere in between?

Ugh, it’s really my weak point. But I start at the beginning and I go to the end. Certainly, when I was a younger reporter, and editors are trying to hurry you up, and they always say, “If you don’t have your lead, just go write something else.” No.

You know, I have to have the blank page, and I can’t do anything until I have my lead. I have to really believe in the lead to at least get everything else on paper. Even if it changes later, you know? I’m not suggesting it for other writers, but for me personally, I’m a top-to-bottom kind of person.

One of the things I thought was really striking about these stories was the use of detail and imagery. For example, there’s a line in one story, about two girls, “a tangle of giggles.” I would love to hear about your process. Do you just see those things and put them in your notebook? Do you have to work at it?

I’m a night owl. So I’m usually writing at two o’clock in the morning with a Diet Coke, you know, getting a little punchy. And I’m usually playing the scenes in my mind. I’m seeing things. I’m kind of replaying. I’m watching what happened in my head. And a lot of times what ends up in the story is not what ended up in my notebook. I think it comes more from those mental images. And I was thinking about Francisco’s daughters, and I just typed “a tangle of giggles.” I just typed it. And I remember it just came out of nowhere. I remember feeling delighted. You know that feeling like, “Oh! I like that.”

There are some light moments in these stories, too.

Always.

Why do you feel it was important to include those?

I think my overall purpose was to introduce people to each other, to let them get to know one another. And I think how we bond with each other is through laughter. Like, the people we like to be with are the people whose sense of humor we share. I mean that’s how you make friends with people, like when you’re traveling. If you can share a little laugh with someone, that’s what breaks the ice and makes you feel a little comfortable.

There’s a saying. I don’t remember who said it, but my dad used to say it a lot: “Angels can fly if they take themselves lightly.” I think that’s true for a story, too. When you’re talking about something that’s very wrenching and has a lot of pathos, if it’s just all the grit and despair, it’s not servicing telling the reality because the kind of people that I’m writing about are very resilient, and they have humor. And there’s something to be admired there. And it usually comes through in the lighter moments. And you don’t care as much about the dark unless there’s at least a little pinpoint of light.

[caption id="attachment_119734" align="aligncenter" width="620"]Pistachio farmer Fred Lujan   struggled to keep his trees alive. Photo by Michael Robinson Chavez/Los Angeles Times Pistachio farmer Fred Lujan struggled to keep his trees alive. Photo by Michael Robinson Chavez/Los Angeles Times[/caption]

I described the stories as quiet because they feel understated. There are moments, like when Fred Lujan starts crying, that other writers might have been tempted to really blow out or overdramatize. But you didn’t feel the need to gussy it up.

Oh, God no. Well, extraneous things never add power. Power comes from essence, right?

What was the moment like when you heard you had won the Pulitzer Prize?


When they said my name, I just did that thing you do when you’re a kid. I closed my eyes to make sure I wasn’t dreaming. Because when you’re a kid and you want to check if something’s real, you know how you just close your eyes for a minute? And then it was a whirl and I was happy and there were speeches and there was champagne.


Why do you think these particular stories resonated both with the Pulitzer Board and readers?

I’m of a divided mind on that. Because I always worry that no one’s going to be interested in reading them. You could argue that nothing happens. I mean my editor Davan [Los Angeles Times editor-in-chief Davan Maharaj] — his favorite story in the series is the one with the farmer who gives the water to his neighbors. And he says it’s his favorite story where nothing happens. So I guess there’s a part of me that always expects, and always does get some of those letters saying, “What’s this doing on the front page?” And then they’ll run down the list of news that day that they find far more important. I don’t know why it resonated, but I feel that it’s such a validation of this writing that it did. It just makes me so happy to think that there are stories whose main purpose is just to introduce people and make them understand a certain way of life or make them feel like they know this person.

That’s narrative, right? That’s what narrative does.

Right, exactly. That’s what narrative does. So at least this kind of narrative. Even though they’re very sad stories and very tragic circumstances, people will write me and say, “You know, I was having such a bad day, and then I read about this guy. And it made me want to do something kind for someone.” I get these “Thank you for the story” notes. And I am really the wrong person to be thanking; I’m just telling the story. But you get the privilege of being the go-between, of saying, “Hey, this is part of the world too.” If we only write about the bad, that’s not a complete picture.There is a lot of perseverance and faith and friendship and humor. There’s everything. It’s a big, complex world of good and bad. And the good counts.

 

 

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Louise Kiernan
Three Pulitzer Winners to Read Now https://niemanstoryboard.org/2015/04/21/three-pulitzer-winners-to-read-now/ Tue, 21 Apr 2015 19:04:51 +0000 https://niemanstoryboard.org/2015/04/21/three-pulitzer-winners-to-read-now/ The Pulitzer Prizes are revealed in one fell swoop, winners and finalists alike, 21 separate categories that cover everything from music to history to local news reporting. And many of the winning stories consist of multiple parts. So, if you’re like most of us, yesterday’s announcement of the 2015 prizes suddenly dumped a lot more […]

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The Pulitzer Prizes are revealed in one fell swoop, winners and finalists alike, 21 separate categories that cover everything from music to history to local news reporting. And many of the winning stories consist of multiple parts. So, if you’re like most of us, yesterday’s announcement of the 2015 prizes suddenly dumped a lot more reading on your nightstand.

Where to start?  We’ll try to help with the suggestion of three prize-winning entries that stand out for their storytelling. A caveat, though: don’t let your exploration of this year’s best in journalism stop here. These are just a few highlights among many excellent pieces of work.

The New York Times won the international reporting award for its coverage of the Ebola crisis in West Africa, with a team who, as the newspaper’s nominating letter notes, included a Pulitzer-prize winning physician, a videographer so familiar with the area that he speaks a local tribal dialect and a staff reporter who is Liberian-American and returned to her homeland to write about the outbreak. The entire package is well worth your time but begin with the two videos by Ben Solomon. These taut, stark stories — one about ambulance drivers, the other about patients dying at the hospital door — illustrate the power that sophisticated visual journalism can bring to a complex issue.

Many narrative journalists, of course, turn first to the feature writing prize. This year’s contest was of particular interest because, for the first time, the Pulitzer board allowed the submission of entries from online and print magazines here and in the investigative reporting category. While The New Yorker fielded a finalist in Jennifer Gonnerman’s article about the three-year imprisonment of a teenager at Rikers Island, the winner was Diana Marcum’s intimate, detailed portraits of people affected by the drought in California for The Los Angeles Times. These are quiet stories in the best sense of the word, offering subtle but striking moments like this one, when a struggling store owner is asked for credit by a man buying two packages of hot dog buns and a roll of paper towels:
“Hey, Kenny, OK if I pay for these after Friday?” he asked, lowering his voice.

Alrihimi nodded. But his stomach dropped. This was a man who had never asked for credit before.

The store owner had 29 receipts that constituted the week’s IOUs. On the backs of two torn-up cigarette cartons, he wrote the running accounts: the ones where they owed $34, paid $12, then charged $8.

“It’s too sad to say no. I think of their kids,” said Alrihimi, a father of five. “They don’t have any money. I don’t have any money. We’re all trying to get through, little-by-little-bit.”

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch won the Pulitzer Prize for breaking news photography for its coverage of the unrest in Ferguson, Mo., but the images are anything but fleeting. Some, like the photograph of a young man tossing back a tear gas canister, have already etched themselves into our collective memory of the events; none shy away from the raw emotions and uncomfortable aspects of this story, including one photo that portrays a gun-toting looter. It’s clear from the depth and range of the work that, as the newspaper’s director of photography told The New York Times photo blog, “The staff are experts at St. Louis.”

Again, this is just an introduction to a collection of remarkable journalism, both winners and finalists. So when you’ve finished these, move on to the Post and Courier’s stunning series on deaths from domestic violence in South Carolina, which won the medal for public service, and keep going from there.

 

 

 

 

 

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Louise Kiernan
Weekend picks: Child stars, scandal and poetry https://niemanstoryboard.org/2015/04/10/weekend-reading-child-stars-scandal-and-poetry/ Fri, 10 Apr 2015 14:28:05 +0000 https://niemanstoryboard.org/2015/04/10/weekend-reading-child-stars-scandal-and-poetry/ Want some smart, provocative, moving stories for your weekend inspiration? Here are Storyboard’s picks of some notable recent work, ranging from poetry about race to essays on journalistic misdeeds and a tale about a forgotten child star from the 1970s. Claudia Rankine’s fifth volume of poetry, “Citizen: An American Lyric” won this year’s National Book Critics Circle […]

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Want some smart, provocative, moving stories for your weekend inspiration? Here are Storyboard’s picks of some notable recent work, ranging from poetry about race to essays on journalistic misdeeds and a tale about a forgotten child star from the 1970s.

Claudia Rankine’s fifth volume of poetry, “Citizen: An American Lyric” won this year’s National Book Critics Circle poetry award and was a finalist for the National Book Award. It’s a remarkable book, weaving together prose poems, essays and visual images in a sharp, haunting exploration of racism. And, in a week that featured the release of a horrific video showing a South Carolina police officer repeatedly shooting an unarmed, fleeing man in the back, her voice takes on even more resonance. Here, in a poem that explicitly addresses the issue of black men being pulled over by police, she writes:
“Then flashes, a siren, a stretched-out roar– and you are not the guy and still you fit the description because there is only one guy who is always the guy fitting the description.”

This YouTube video, depicting 1970s child star Mason Reese breaking down into tears on “The Mike Douglas Show,” prompted Jonathan Goldstein, host of the CBC radio progam “WireTap,” to investigate why clips of the precocious television and film actor had suddenly begun showing up on the video-sharing service 40 years after his heyday.

In a co-production with the podcast “Reply All,” Goldstein tracks down Reese to find out what became of him. The story is a beautifully structured hourglass, seamlessly leading you from general musings about late-night nostalgia to the claustrophobia of a memento-filled two-room apartment in New York and back out again. And, like the best of this kind of work, it takes you through a narrative that is far more complex and nuanced than you might expect.

In the chorus of reaction to the release this week of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism’s report on the discredited Rolling Stone article about campus rape, two pieces stood out. The first is the Columbia Journalism Review Q-and-A with the report’s lead authors, journalism school dean Steve Coll and Sheila Coronel, dean of academic affairs. The interview offers valuable insights into what the two discovered during the investigation and believe should be its lessons. Coll, in particular, emphasizes one interesting point that did not get as much attention elsewhere:
“If anyone thinks there was a golden age of excellent reporting practice, that’s probably wrong. But certainly now, there are a lot of new entrants and a lot of young self-educating reporters who need a way to talk about these practices at a level of real ethical detail and seriousness. Because if you get it wrong that can not only have consequences that are serious for others but you can end your career, real quickly.”

And in The New Yorker, George Packer implicates the “tyranny of narrative” in the debacle, citing various points where the reporter and editors made decisions that favored story over truth:
“One can imagine the impulses competing in the feature editor’s mind—carefulness and transparency on the one hand, the stylistic pleasure of an uninterrupted flow of narrative on the other. It’s a question that comes up in every piece of literary journalism worth the name.”

 

 

 

 

 

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Louise Kiernan
Writers, Editors Talk Shop at Missouri https://niemanstoryboard.org/2015/03/17/writers-editors-talk-shop-at-missouri/ Tue, 17 Mar 2015 03:27:52 +0000 https://niemanstoryboard.org/2015/03/17/writers-editors-talk-shop-at-missouri/ Forget South by Southwest. The real happening place to be Monday, at least if you’re a narrative nerd, was Columbia, Missouri, where you could have heard a full day’s worth of conversations between some top long-form writers and their editors as part of an event sponsored by the University of Missouri’s School of Journalism. Called […]

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Forget South by Southwest. The real happening place to be Monday, at least if you’re a narrative nerd, was Columbia, Missouri, where you could have heard a full day’s worth of conversations between some top long-form writers and their editors as part of an event sponsored by the University of Missouri’s School of Journalism.

Called “Writers and Editors: The Most Dynamic Relationship in Journalism,” the conference featured some familiar bylines, among them Esquire’s Chris JonesGQ’s Jeff Sharlet and and Los Angeles magazine’s Amy Wallace, as well as Atavist founder Evan Ratliff and Women’s Health editor-in-chief Amy Keller Laird.  Mizzou’s student-run magazine, Vox, has detailed coverage of the day’s sessions.  And here’s a handful of our favorite tidbits of wisdom, humor and advice, culled from Twitter and Instagram posts:

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Louise Kiernan
“Serial” podcast producers talk storytelling, structure and if they know whodunnit https://niemanstoryboard.org/2014/10/30/serial-podcast-producers-talk-storytelling-structure-and-if-they-know-whodunnit/ Thu, 30 Oct 2014 12:39:24 +0000 https://niemanstoryboard.org/2014/10/30/serial-podcast-producers-talk-storytelling-structure-and-if-they-know-whodunnit/

If, in recent weeks, you’ve walked up to a group at a party passionately debating whether Jay is telling the truth or overheard a headphone-wearing passenger on the train mutter something about a body in Leakin Park or interrupted a friend at her computer analyzing images of a 15-year-old cell phone call log, well, you’ve encountered “Serial” addiction.

Since it debuted earlier this month, “Serial,” the new podcast spinoff of “This American Life,” has consistently topped the iTunes charts, spawned dozens of discussion threads on Reddit and made a whole lot of people happier on Thursday mornings, which is when each weekly episode is released. The story, told one installment at a time, re-investigates the murder of Baltimore high school student Hae Min Lee, whose ex-boyfriend Adnan Syed was convicted of strangling her to death in 1999 and has been imprisoned since.

The true-crime outline may sound familiar; the storytelling is not. The plot and characters unfold from episode to episode, meandering through fascinating wrong turns and unresolved mysteries. Halfway through the season, with 6 of the planned 12 episodes released, even the program’s producers aren’t sure how the story will turn out. Storyboard talked with “Serial” host and executive producer Sarah Koenig and executive producer Julie Snyder about how you structure a story when you don’t know the ending, the challenges of explaining how cellphone towers work and lack of sleep.

An edited transcript follows:

Storyboard: Maybe it’s just the English major in me, but the first thing I thought of when I heard the title “Serial” was Dickens. Is that what you were thinking? Can you talk a little bit about how you came up with the model for telling the story and how it’s evolved as you’ve been producing the segments?

Sarah: Yes, I was thinking of Dickens. I’m sorry — I know my colleagues do not like it when I discuss this because we’re “doing something that’s new.” I’m an old-fashioned consumer. I’m actually a very catholic consumer of entertainment. I like high and low and books and TV. I like it all. I listen to a lot of books on tape, and the reason I do that is because I hate to fly so I drive to a lot of places that normal people would take airplanes to and so I take out books on tape and I love it. I love getting lost in some story for hours and hours.

It’s not like it came to me in a flash, “We should make a radio show like that!” It was more like well, what if we just did one story over time? I’ve probably formed this into a more conscious line of cause and effect than it probably is, but I think somewhere in my head is that idea of a book on tape. So, that’s how I think of it.

And how has that model changed as you’ve been actually making it happen?

Sarah:  I think our ignorance probably allowed us to go ahead and try it. If we had known the difficulties, we might have thought twice. I think it’s good and bad.  I’m assuming Dickens knew what his story was as he was going. We really are reporting it as we go.

Julie and I have probably made two or three structures for the whole season, where we plotted out episodes one through twelve, for example. And we have ripped apart or erased each one within a few days of making it, or a week of making it, each time as we’ve just realized, “Wait, this story’s making this turn now; we can’t do what we thought we were going to do.” And that’s scary but it’s also kind of wonderful in that the format allows us to be so flexible and so responsive to new information as we’re getting it. We created this structure but it’s helping us and hurting us.

So you mapped out several structures in advance for how you thought the story might unfold?

Sarah: Yeah. So with each one, we’ve always known we don’t know exactly how it’s going to end, but assuming it’s going to go the way we think it’s going to go, here’s what we’ll do. And then, when we realize maybe it’s not going the way we think it’s going to go, let’s take it apart and start again. Or even just simpler things where [we are] figuring out what the audience needs to know to be with us along the way, so that when we figure stuff out, we all have the same base of knowledge. So, some of it is as simple as that. Then we’re still reporting it and so our assumptions about what things mean, or things that we kind of decided were one way five months ago — this is happening a lot where we’re going back to the same notes, the same police reports, the same whatever– and being like, “Oh, I never noticed this thing before because now I know all this.” You know what I mean? So, things are changing.

Were there any models or inspirations you had in mind for telling a story this way?

Julie: Yeah, definitely. In some ways, it’s a very traditional story in that we’re pretty solidly in the realm of a true-crime story, which is not breaking any new ground. I feel like the difference of what we’re trying to do compared to a lot of stuff you see, especially on TV, would be to try and tell a story, to talk about the case in a way where you understand that everybody is a real person and that it happened to real people and not play it for exploitation.

But other than that, I think we recognize in that way, we’re not breaking new ground. It’s a genre that is pretty tried-and-true. In terms of breaking it out into serialized installments, so that things are moving forward and changing as the story goes on, we’ve talked about this before, that there was a documentary called “The Staircase” that was on the Sundance channel. And I think that was seven parts, maybe eight parts. It followed a murder trial in North Carolina and it was very similar in a way that we felt about going through this process where a lot of times, like Sarah just was explaining, you see things differently based on the information that you have at the time.

As you get more information, all of a sudden that information gets colored. And so, I would imagine that is exactly the experience that a lot of, certainly reporters but maybe even investigators and homicide detectives and those kind of people who do this for a living, have as well. We really felt that realization of things changing as you find out more. So that was what we were looking at as a model.

What really appealed to us about the serialized format when Sarah first proposed it was that you could also do stories as they’re unfolding. So you could even do stories in real time. I’m so tired right now and I think Sarah’s so tired right now that the idea of that seems horrible, but it would be really cool. That would be really, really cool.

One of the most striking consequences about choosing to tell a story in a serial format is that you have all these people who are now investigating it and analyzing it and commenting about it right alongside you. There are discussion boards on Reddit, for example, and Rabia Chaudry, the woman who brought you the story idea, is blogging about it. Did you anticipate that might happen? How do you feel about it?

Sarah: I didn’t know so many people were going to listen. I really, really didn’t. I’m thrilled and it’s exciting, but I didn’t know so many people were going to give a shit, you know what I mean? And so, I didn’t see that coming, no.

I’m not on Facebook, I’m not on Twitter. I’m not someone who pays the attention necessarily to that sort of Internet activity. So I just didn’t even know. I’ve been really surprised and I think it’s great. People are engaged, right? But I also fear it, too. It’s very easy to start throwing around accusations and information or stuff you think you know, or whatever, and to just forget, like Julie’s saying, that these are real people. These are real people with families and lives, who have trusted me with their information or with their anonymity, and so it makes it nervous. It makes me really nervous.

Do either of you follow any of it? Are you looking at it at all?

Julie: Honestly, we’re so busy and working so much, so mainly only in the way of just trying to make sure that there isn’t horrible misinformation that’s being accepted as true.

And has it impacted the storytelling?

Sarah: I don’t think so. I’m not reading it for the most part. One of our colleagues is scanning it for two things. One is if there’s somebody who really knows something, can you let us know? And then also if there’s anything really horrible on there, we want to know about it and just make sure nothing too terrible is happening. But other than that, I’m not reading it. We don’t have time. So no, I don’t think it’s affected the story. It’s reinforced to me how careful we need to be. We were being careful anyway, but it definitely is a reminder–people are really listening closely. Julie, do you think it’s changed the story at all?

Julie: I don’t think it’s changed the story. I think the main question I had for a long time is, “Are you confused?” Because there’s a lot of information.  Last week’s episode — even my husband was brought to his knees a little. Even he was like, “I’m not sure I totally got everything… It’s dense.” That’s more my concern when I’m looking at the Facebook page and looking at posts. I think what I’m trying to gauge is, “Did we just try all of your patience and you’re just like ‘Okay, I was interested, but I wasn’t that interested that I wanted you to spend 45 minutes talking about cellphone towers in Baltimore County.'”

One of things that’s so interesting about “Serial” is that you’re not cleaning up the narrative as reporters often do. It’s really messy. We go down all the wrong turns with you. Can you talk a little bit about why you’re doing that?

Sarah: To me, that’s the pleasure of figuring this out. I think our rule of thumb is if it’s interesting to us, we’re going to assume it’s interesting to you. And as long as we’re responsible, not throwing stuff out there that’s totally half-cocked, and as long as we can corroborate what we’re doing, I think that’s kind of the fun of it.

In the midst of this dark, violent story, there are these surprising moments of levity. Can you talk a little about why you’ve included those and what purpose they serve in the storytelling?

Sarah: Oh my God, now you’re making me feel like it’s wrong to make jokes while we’re talking about a murder. Is that—is it wrong? Oh no, am I a bad person?

No, I think it’s effective storytelling.

Sarah: It’s not new to the story. For me, it just feels very normal, the way that I’m writing it and I think I like to have fun where I can.

Julie: Last week’s episode was so dense. But it was also a little unrelenting, so it’s nice to have a moment that just feels like a little bit of some breathing room and a break. So, yeah, take it where you can get it.

Sarah: But it’s not like we’re sitting around saying, “Insert joke here.” You know what I mean? We all have a pretty similar sense of humor, I think on the show. Julie and Dana [producer Dana Chivvis] and I think the same things are funny. When I heard there’s a shrimp sale at the Crab Crib, it just cracked me up, so let’s use it. If we can get away with it. Believe me, we’ve put in a lot of other goofy stuff that we’ve taken out before anyone else hears it.

The two main characters, Adnan and Hae, they’re still a little elusive. I’m waiting for that moment where we really get face-to-face with Adnan, whether it’s literally or metaphorically. Is that going to happen? And how are you thinking about the characters as you develop them over the course of the narrative?

Julie: Sarah’s going to be so happy that you just said that. We have to do all this work of laying out the details so that we can talk about the case on the air and in the story in the same way we talk about it amongst ourselves, with that level of familiarity. And so it takes all this time of explaining this and explaining that and talking about this and talking about that.

At the same time, Sarah has had so many conversations and interviews and experiences with Adnan and with a lot of the other people involved in the case and that she’s talked to over the year, and moments that aren’t necessarily related to — thumbs up, thumbs down, did he do it or did he not? That is the struggle, and I think it is one that we’ve had, right Sarah? Of trying to figure out when can we just settle in? When can I talk about this other stuff that isn’t directly related to having to vote on what you believe. When can we do that?

I do hope that we’re entering into that soon. I feel like we’re getting there now because now we’re at the point where you know everything that Sarah pretty much knew pretty soon on with an intensive amount of reading and some understanding. So then we can get into the kind of conversations and the interviews and the moments that are a little less…

Sarah: Technical.

Julie: Technical, exactly. Yeah. I’m glad that you said that’s what you’re waiting for because, honestly, I’m not sure everyone feels the way that you feel. I can’t quite tell. Is there more of a “Just tell me who did it” kind of thing? Like, “All I want to hear is evidence. I don’t really want to hear anything more narrative than that.” I don’t know. But we want to. But it has been a little bit of a struggle figuring out when we can do this.

Sarah: The popularity of this podcast, I was unprepared for. I think a lot of that is the fact that it’s a crime. It’s a murder case. I had not banked on that’s what people are responding to. It’s not our great idea and our wonderful storytelling; it’s just that people can’t resist a murder mystery. I really did not appreciate that until now. I’m afraid there probably is some of that out there, where it’s just a caper. And that’s fine. I think that’s not our interest, though. That’s not our intention. I think our intention is more complicated and probably more subtle, and maybe too subtle.

It’s funny because I keep thinking for all these people who are like, “Does she know the ending? What’s the ending? How’s it going to end?” To me, when I’m watching “House of Cards” or “Downton Abbey,” or whatever it is, I don’t want to know the ending. To me, the pleasure is in the story, right? So I’m always a little bit like, “Wait, don’t you guys just want to stick with me? Why are you trying to get ahead of the story? Isn’t the pleasure in having it lay out? To me, that’s what I like. So I don’t relate, honestly, so much. I really don’t. I’m sad when it gets to the end of those series. I just want it to keep going.

Do you feel now that you know which of the paths the story is going to take?

Sarah: I don’t think so. Julie? I don’t.

Julie: You know what? I’m not going to be a sucker anymore. I’m not talking about in interviews, more in my own life. I have been it so many times, being all like, “I am 98 percent sure,” and then literally turned back around and said it the other way. I’ve really made an ass of myself in front of Sarah and in front of my colleagues here one too many times in the last nine months. I think I’ve learned my lesson. I’m not making any definitive statements. I just can’t.

If you were starting afresh today with this concept and this particular story, is there anything you would do differently based on what you’ve experienced so far?

Sarah: Yes. Have more than two episodes done by the time you launch. That would be my number one change.

Julie: Yeah. That’s huge. Also, to be totally honest, the “Let’s figure it out ourselves” kind of thing really stresses me out, so I might be a little more wary on that front as well.

Sarah: We’re all a little fried. Julie and I haven’t seen our kids properly in about six weeks. All our home lives are crumbling. I don’t think we would put ourselves in the path of this much stress again, in the same way.

Julie: It’s so nice to be able to take on experiments and challenges and to tell things in new ways and work on new projects. It’s really invigorating, and I think I have learned so much both as an editor but also about what it means to come up with kind of a new concept and positioning that. In so many ways, it’s been incredibly fulfilling.

Sarah: I know, as soon as you started saying that I was like, “Oh right, I’m whining.” That’s ridiculous. We are so goddamn lucky. We are so lucky that we have the freedom to do what we’re doing. It’s crazy, it’s crazy. But we are very tired.

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If, in recent weeks, you’ve walked up to a group at a party passionately debating whether Jay is telling the truth or overheard a headphone-wearing passenger on the train mutter something about a body in Leakin Park or interrupted a friend at her computer analyzing images of a 15-year-old cell phone call log, well, you’ve encountered “Serial” addiction.

Since it debuted earlier this month, “Serial,” the new podcast spinoff of “This American Life,” has consistently topped the iTunes charts, spawned dozens of discussion threads on Reddit and made a whole lot of people happier on Thursday mornings, which is when each weekly episode is released. The story, told one installment at a time, re-investigates the murder of Baltimore high school student Hae Min Lee, whose ex-boyfriend Adnan Syed was convicted of strangling her to death in 1999 and has been imprisoned since.

The true-crime outline may sound familiar; the storytelling is not. The plot and characters unfold from episode to episode, meandering through fascinating wrong turns and unresolved mysteries. Halfway through the season, with 6 of the planned 12 episodes released, even the program’s producers aren’t sure how the story will turn out. Storyboard talked with “Serial” host and executive producer Sarah Koenig and executive producer Julie Snyder about how you structure a story when you don’t know the ending, the challenges of explaining how cellphone towers work and lack of sleep.

An edited transcript follows:

Storyboard: Maybe it’s just the English major in me, but the first thing I thought of when I heard the title “Serial” was Dickens. Is that what you were thinking? Can you talk a little bit about how you came up with the model for telling the story and how it’s evolved as you’ve been producing the segments?

Sarah: Yes, I was thinking of Dickens. I’m sorry — I know my colleagues do not like it when I discuss this because we’re “doing something that’s new.” I’m an old-fashioned consumer. I’m actually a very catholic consumer of entertainment. I like high and low and books and TV. I like it all. I listen to a lot of books on tape, and the reason I do that is because I hate to fly so I drive to a lot of places that normal people would take airplanes to and so I take out books on tape and I love it. I love getting lost in some story for hours and hours.

It’s not like it came to me in a flash, “We should make a radio show like that!” It was more like well, what if we just did one story over time? I’ve probably formed this into a more conscious line of cause and effect than it probably is, but I think somewhere in my head is that idea of a book on tape. So, that’s how I think of it.

And how has that model changed as you’ve been actually making it happen?

Sarah:  I think our ignorance probably allowed us to go ahead and try it. If we had known the difficulties, we might have thought twice. I think it’s good and bad.  I’m assuming Dickens knew what his story was as he was going. We really are reporting it as we go.

Julie and I have probably made two or three structures for the whole season, where we plotted out episodes one through twelve, for example. And we have ripped apart or erased each one within a few days of making it, or a week of making it, each time as we’ve just realized, “Wait, this story’s making this turn now; we can’t do what we thought we were going to do.” And that’s scary but it’s also kind of wonderful in that the format allows us to be so flexible and so responsive to new information as we’re getting it. We created this structure but it’s helping us and hurting us.

So you mapped out several structures in advance for how you thought the story might unfold?

Sarah: Yeah. So with each one, we’ve always known we don’t know exactly how it’s going to end, but assuming it’s going to go the way we think it’s going to go, here’s what we’ll do. And then, when we realize maybe it’s not going the way we think it’s going to go, let’s take it apart and start again. Or even just simpler things where [we are] figuring out what the audience needs to know to be with us along the way, so that when we figure stuff out, we all have the same base of knowledge. So, some of it is as simple as that. Then we’re still reporting it and so our assumptions about what things mean, or things that we kind of decided were one way five months ago — this is happening a lot where we’re going back to the same notes, the same police reports, the same whatever– and being like, “Oh, I never noticed this thing before because now I know all this.” You know what I mean? So, things are changing.

Were there any models or inspirations you had in mind for telling a story this way?

Julie: Yeah, definitely. In some ways, it’s a very traditional story in that we’re pretty solidly in the realm of a true-crime story, which is not breaking any new ground. I feel like the difference of what we’re trying to do compared to a lot of stuff you see, especially on TV, would be to try and tell a story, to talk about the case in a way where you understand that everybody is a real person and that it happened to real people and not play it for exploitation.

But other than that, I think we recognize in that way, we’re not breaking new ground. It’s a genre that is pretty tried-and-true. In terms of breaking it out into serialized installments, so that things are moving forward and changing as the story goes on, we’ve talked about this before, that there was a documentary called “The Staircase” that was on the Sundance channel. And I think that was seven parts, maybe eight parts. It followed a murder trial in North Carolina and it was very similar in a way that we felt about going through this process where a lot of times, like Sarah just was explaining, you see things differently based on the information that you have at the time.

As you get more information, all of a sudden that information gets colored. And so, I would imagine that is exactly the experience that a lot of, certainly reporters but maybe even investigators and homicide detectives and those kind of people who do this for a living, have as well. We really felt that realization of things changing as you find out more. So that was what we were looking at as a model.

What really appealed to us about the serialized format when Sarah first proposed it was that you could also do stories as they’re unfolding. So you could even do stories in real time. I’m so tired right now and I think Sarah’s so tired right now that the idea of that seems horrible, but it would be really cool. That would be really, really cool.

One of the most striking consequences about choosing to tell a story in a serial format is that you have all these people who are now investigating it and analyzing it and commenting about it right alongside you. There are discussion boards on Reddit, for example, and Rabia Chaudry, the woman who brought you the story idea, is blogging about it. Did you anticipate that might happen? How do you feel about it?

Sarah: I didn’t know so many people were going to listen. I really, really didn’t. I’m thrilled and it’s exciting, but I didn’t know so many people were going to give a shit, you know what I mean? And so, I didn’t see that coming, no.

I’m not on Facebook, I’m not on Twitter. I’m not someone who pays the attention necessarily to that sort of Internet activity. So I just didn’t even know. I’ve been really surprised and I think it’s great. People are engaged, right? But I also fear it, too. It’s very easy to start throwing around accusations and information or stuff you think you know, or whatever, and to just forget, like Julie’s saying, that these are real people. These are real people with families and lives, who have trusted me with their information or with their anonymity, and so it makes it nervous. It makes me really nervous.

Do either of you follow any of it? Are you looking at it at all?

Julie: Honestly, we’re so busy and working so much, so mainly only in the way of just trying to make sure that there isn’t horrible misinformation that’s being accepted as true.

And has it impacted the storytelling?

Sarah: I don’t think so. I’m not reading it for the most part. One of our colleagues is scanning it for two things. One is if there’s somebody who really knows something, can you let us know? And then also if there’s anything really horrible on there, we want to know about it and just make sure nothing too terrible is happening. But other than that, I’m not reading it. We don’t have time. So no, I don’t think it’s affected the story. It’s reinforced to me how careful we need to be. We were being careful anyway, but it definitely is a reminder–people are really listening closely. Julie, do you think it’s changed the story at all?

Julie: I don’t think it’s changed the story. I think the main question I had for a long time is, “Are you confused?” Because there’s a lot of information.  Last week’s episode — even my husband was brought to his knees a little. Even he was like, “I’m not sure I totally got everything… It’s dense.” That’s more my concern when I’m looking at the Facebook page and looking at posts. I think what I’m trying to gauge is, “Did we just try all of your patience and you’re just like ‘Okay, I was interested, but I wasn’t that interested that I wanted you to spend 45 minutes talking about cellphone towers in Baltimore County.'”

One of things that’s so interesting about “Serial” is that you’re not cleaning up the narrative as reporters often do. It’s really messy. We go down all the wrong turns with you. Can you talk a little bit about why you’re doing that?

Sarah: To me, that’s the pleasure of figuring this out. I think our rule of thumb is if it’s interesting to us, we’re going to assume it’s interesting to you. And as long as we’re responsible, not throwing stuff out there that’s totally half-cocked, and as long as we can corroborate what we’re doing, I think that’s kind of the fun of it.

In the midst of this dark, violent story, there are these surprising moments of levity. Can you talk a little about why you’ve included those and what purpose they serve in the storytelling?

Sarah: Oh my God, now you’re making me feel like it’s wrong to make jokes while we’re talking about a murder. Is that—is it wrong? Oh no, am I a bad person?

No, I think it’s effective storytelling.

Sarah: It’s not new to the story. For me, it just feels very normal, the way that I’m writing it and I think I like to have fun where I can.

Julie: Last week’s episode was so dense. But it was also a little unrelenting, so it’s nice to have a moment that just feels like a little bit of some breathing room and a break. So, yeah, take it where you can get it.

Sarah: But it’s not like we’re sitting around saying, “Insert joke here.” You know what I mean? We all have a pretty similar sense of humor, I think on the show. Julie and Dana [producer Dana Chivvis] and I think the same things are funny. When I heard there’s a shrimp sale at the Crab Crib, it just cracked me up, so let’s use it. If we can get away with it. Believe me, we’ve put in a lot of other goofy stuff that we’ve taken out before anyone else hears it.

The two main characters, Adnan and Hae, they’re still a little elusive. I’m waiting for that moment where we really get face-to-face with Adnan, whether it’s literally or metaphorically. Is that going to happen? And how are you thinking about the characters as you develop them over the course of the narrative?

Julie: Sarah’s going to be so happy that you just said that. We have to do all this work of laying out the details so that we can talk about the case on the air and in the story in the same way we talk about it amongst ourselves, with that level of familiarity. And so it takes all this time of explaining this and explaining that and talking about this and talking about that.

At the same time, Sarah has had so many conversations and interviews and experiences with Adnan and with a lot of the other people involved in the case and that she’s talked to over the year, and moments that aren’t necessarily related to — thumbs up, thumbs down, did he do it or did he not? That is the struggle, and I think it is one that we’ve had, right Sarah? Of trying to figure out when can we just settle in? When can I talk about this other stuff that isn’t directly related to having to vote on what you believe. When can we do that?

I do hope that we’re entering into that soon. I feel like we’re getting there now because now we’re at the point where you know everything that Sarah pretty much knew pretty soon on with an intensive amount of reading and some understanding. So then we can get into the kind of conversations and the interviews and the moments that are a little less…

Sarah: Technical.

Julie: Technical, exactly. Yeah. I’m glad that you said that’s what you’re waiting for because, honestly, I’m not sure everyone feels the way that you feel. I can’t quite tell. Is there more of a “Just tell me who did it” kind of thing? Like, “All I want to hear is evidence. I don’t really want to hear anything more narrative than that.” I don’t know. But we want to. But it has been a little bit of a struggle figuring out when we can do this.

Sarah: The popularity of this podcast, I was unprepared for. I think a lot of that is the fact that it’s a crime. It’s a murder case. I had not banked on that’s what people are responding to. It’s not our great idea and our wonderful storytelling; it’s just that people can’t resist a murder mystery. I really did not appreciate that until now. I’m afraid there probably is some of that out there, where it’s just a caper. And that’s fine. I think that’s not our interest, though. That’s not our intention. I think our intention is more complicated and probably more subtle, and maybe too subtle.

It’s funny because I keep thinking for all these people who are like, “Does she know the ending? What’s the ending? How’s it going to end?” To me, when I’m watching “House of Cards” or “Downton Abbey,” or whatever it is, I don’t want to know the ending. To me, the pleasure is in the story, right? So I’m always a little bit like, “Wait, don’t you guys just want to stick with me? Why are you trying to get ahead of the story? Isn’t the pleasure in having it lay out? To me, that’s what I like. So I don’t relate, honestly, so much. I really don’t. I’m sad when it gets to the end of those series. I just want it to keep going.

Do you feel now that you know which of the paths the story is going to take?

Sarah: I don’t think so. Julie? I don’t.

Julie: You know what? I’m not going to be a sucker anymore. I’m not talking about in interviews, more in my own life. I have been it so many times, being all like, “I am 98 percent sure,” and then literally turned back around and said it the other way. I’ve really made an ass of myself in front of Sarah and in front of my colleagues here one too many times in the last nine months. I think I’ve learned my lesson. I’m not making any definitive statements. I just can’t.

If you were starting afresh today with this concept and this particular story, is there anything you would do differently based on what you’ve experienced so far?

Sarah: Yes. Have more than two episodes done by the time you launch. That would be my number one change.

Julie: Yeah. That’s huge. Also, to be totally honest, the “Let’s figure it out ourselves” kind of thing really stresses me out, so I might be a little more wary on that front as well.

Sarah: We’re all a little fried. Julie and I haven’t seen our kids properly in about six weeks. All our home lives are crumbling. I don’t think we would put ourselves in the path of this much stress again, in the same way.

Julie: It’s so nice to be able to take on experiments and challenges and to tell things in new ways and work on new projects. It’s really invigorating, and I think I have learned so much both as an editor but also about what it means to come up with kind of a new concept and positioning that. In so many ways, it’s been incredibly fulfilling.

Sarah: I know, as soon as you started saying that I was like, “Oh right, I’m whining.” That’s ridiculous. We are so goddamn lucky. We are so lucky that we have the freedom to do what we’re doing. It’s crazy, it’s crazy. But we are very tired.

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Louise Kiernan
Fourth “Power of Storytelling” conference opens in Romania https://niemanstoryboard.org/2014/10/17/fourth-power-of-storytelling-conference-opens-in-romania/ Fri, 17 Oct 2014 11:06:39 +0000 https://niemanstoryboard.org/2014/10/17/fourth-power-of-storytelling-conference-opens-in-romania/ If we were in Bucharest today, we could listen to newly named New York Times deputy international editor Amy O’Leary talk about digital storytelling or delve into the less glamorous aspects of the writer’s life with Esquire’s Chris Jones or watch Indiana University professor Kelley Benham deconstruct her remarkable story about the premature birth of her […]

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If we were in Bucharest today, we could listen to newly named New York Times deputy international editor Amy O’Leary talk about digital storytelling or delve into the less glamorous aspects of the writer’s life with Esquire’s Chris Jones or watch Indiana University professor Kelley Benham deconstruct her remarkable story about the premature birth of her daughter.

But those of us stuck at home during the fourth annual “Power of Storytelling” narrative journalism conference need not despair. Thanks to conference founder Cristian Lupsa, editor of the non-fiction journal Decât o Revistă and a 2014 Nieman fellow, and his colleagues, Storyboard will bring you excerpts from the two-day conference as soon as they’re available.

In the interim, you can follow the happenings on Twitter, with the hashtag #story14, and whet your appetite here with some highlights from previous conferences.

In this session at the 2012 conference, Jones spoke about the purpose of writing and what makes a good writer:

I get asked all the time about what makes a great writer. What makes a good writer. And it’s such a hard question to answer. There’s things like curiosity, determination and honesty, and all these things are important, but the thing that for me – it’s my test – if I was to hire one person out of this room, who would I take? It would be the person who cared the most.


The same year, Atavist editor and founder Evan Ratliff talked about the challenges of creating his venture and how it required him to do all the work he had “become a writer not to do:”

“I think the lesson here is one that I’m still grappling with. I think that sometimes you just have to get over yourself, and sometimes you just have to survive. And this is what we had to do to survive. We had to do things that we were not ready to do and I think that is true for a lot of journalists who want to strike out as freelancers, who want to write things that are different from what your editors want you to write, and you want to go out in the world and find new magazines and find new homes.”


You can also read radio producer Starlee Kine’s take on developing ideas or see what Jacqui Banaszynski thinks about the future of storytelling. And stay tuned for dispatches from this year’s sessions.

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Louise Kiernan
Pinker, King and Sager on writing https://niemanstoryboard.org/2014/10/10/pinker-king-and-sager-on-writing/ Fri, 10 Oct 2014 14:21:03 +0000 https://niemanstoryboard.org/2014/10/10/pinker-king-and-sager-on-writing/ For this weekend’s selections, Storyboard recommends reading about writing; we’re highlighting some recent articles that feature advice from authors whose worlds range from horror to science to journalism. Harvard cognitive scientist, psychologist and dictionary boss Steven Pinker — he’s the chairman of the usage panel of the American Heritage dictionary — has a new book […]

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For this weekend’s selections, Storyboard recommends reading about writing; we’re highlighting some recent articles that feature advice from authors whose worlds range from horror to science to journalism.

Harvard cognitive scientist, psychologist and dictionary boss Steven Pinker — he’s the chairman of the usage panel of the American Heritage dictionary — has a new book out about writing, “The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century,” and he seems to be talking and writing about it everywhere. You can check out these pieces in The Wall Street Journal and Scientific American. We like this Q-and-A with the New Republic. In it, he describes his theory of the “classic style” of writing, telling interviewer Jesse Singal: 
“Classic style makes writing, which is necessarily artificial, as artificially natural as possible, if you’d pardon the oxymoron. That is, you’re not physically with someone when you write. You’re not literally having a conversation with them, but classic style simulates those experiences and so it takes an inherently artificial situation, namely writing, and it simulates a more natural interaction, the more natural interaction being (a) conversation (b) seeing the world.”

On The Atlantic website, contributor Jessica Lahey interviewed author Stephen King about how he teaches writing. Sentence diagramming? Yes. Essay assignments? No. The Oxford comma? It depends. Plus, this piece of advice that’s useful for anyone who wants to improve their work:
“You need to take out the stuff that’s just sitting there and doing nothing. No slackers allowed! All meat, no filler!”

We randomly stumbled upon this list of 51 writing tips on Esquire writer and author Mike Sager‘s website and struck gold. Here are his first five commandments:
“Thou shalt not bore.

Do not start stories with the time, season, or weather conditions.

Do not start with “It was” or “It’s” or “When.”

Do not ever use time sub heads (12:15) to break up a feature story. Write in scenes.

Get an imagination. If it’s been done before, find a different way to do it. If it’s been said before, find a different way to say it.”

Other personal favorites include Nos. 19, 22 and 40.

Happy reading — and writing.

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Louise Kiernan