I was scrolling the social media platform Threads when I happened upon one of those ledes that makes you keep reading. Which is what I did — through 5,000 words of story about problematic business practices at one of America’s most beloved national parks.

The story, published Aug. 6, 2024, by Bloomberg.com’s magazine, Businessweek, was by Laura Bliss. She drew readers deep into the wonder of Yosemite National Park as a way to investigate complaints against Aramark, the company that contracts to manage the park’s many concessions. The straightforward headline: “Parks and Degradation: The Mess at Yosemite.”

Here’s the lede:

A COUPLE OF MILES PAST THE WESTERN ENTRANCE TO Yosemite National Park, visitors pass from California into a postcard. The road opens to a majestic view of Half Dome, El Capitan and Cathedral Rocks —celebrity peaks if ever there were — which form the towering walls of Yosemite Valley. On the pine-scented floor of John Muir’s mountain mansion, the Merced River flows gently by the side of the road as signs point toward trailheads and tourist destinations. Not far from Curry Village, a cluster of tent cabins and eateries at the eastern end of the road, is a section of employee housing known as the Stables. It was there that Erin Rau found herself wrapped in a sleeping bag one broiling afternoon last summer, wondering whether she was about to die.

It was powerful and compelling, enough so that I created a Bloomberg account to continue reading it. Then I took note at the story craft at work:

The story begins with a description of the vista a visitor encounters when entering the western end of Yosemite. It is straightforward — almost spare — which lets the unparalleled beauty of the place do the work. The writerly embellishments are few and effective: visitors passing from California into “a postcard;” “celebrity peaks;” the “mountain mansion” of early naturalist John Muir. I was transported to that very road. I didn’t know what the story was about yet, but I could see the place as if I was there. We’ve almost all seen photos of Yosemite’s standout features, or watched documentaries about the park, or perhaps have been lucky enough to see them in person. Bliss leaned into a description that was simultaneously familiar and aspirational: Who among us has actually scaled El Capitan except in our wildest dreams?

Like good mystery novels or investigative stories, the lede also includes a hint or foreshadow, this with that opening paragraph leading to a last sentence that introduced a young park employee. “It was there,” Bliss wrote, that the woman, wrapped in a sleeping bag, felt so sick she worried she might die. I happen to love mysteries and thrillers. I was hooked. Bliss had achieved a narrative writer’s greatest goal, which is to make a reader keep reading to find out what happened.

It turns out that the worker, Erin Rau, along with her roommates and other workers, had complained many times about working conditions, including an infestation of deer mice in their sleeping quarters and in other buildings. Deer mice can carry hantavirus, a rare but potentially fatal disease. A roommate drove Rau 90 minutes to the nearest hospital, where she tested positive for the virus.

The mini-narrative of Rau’s situation is a mini-narrative that launches the rest of the story. The hook is set. We want to know more — about Rau,  about conditions at the park, about who was responsible and about whether anyone will be held to account. It’s only in paragraph five when we are introduced to Aramark, a private company contracted to manage concessions at Yosemite. The story goes on to describe many documented complaints, from bedbugs to chemical spills to conditions that resulted in the deaths of several bears.

The bulk of the story probes the myriad problems with Aramark, whether and how the National Park Service is attempting to hold them accountable, and steps by Congress to make its displeasure of park management known. It details persistent problems with Aramark’s management of restaurants, bars, hotels, inadequate staffing and more.

As long as this story is, it doesn’t read like one. The deep reporting is woven through with descriptions of a single, special place; the unspooling of discoveries that keeps the reader moving; the overall chronicle raises larger issues to reveal weak environmental policies, corporate greed and lack of consequences that plague America’s most precious resources.

* * *

Liz Seegert is an award-winning freelance journalist who specializes in covering health care and related issues. Her work has written for magazines, newspapers, broadcast and digital outlets, and government, non-profit, corporate and educational clients.

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Currently in an email thread that is 70 messages long (and growing) — all to check the accuracy of a 3,000 word story, with a special focus on a few sentences. Those sentences are not wrong, but we’d like to be sure that people who implied things in conversation were being factually correct. Yes, this is annoying. It also fills me with so much geeky gratitude for the care that people in journalism (reporters, fact checkers, editors) put into getting this work right.

* * *

Jyoti Madhusoodanan is a freelance journalist based in Portland, Oregon, who covers life sciences, health and chemistry.

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It had been seven months since I’d retired from the Minneapolis Star Tribune after nearly 50 years in journalism, and, like retired people everywhere, I realized it was time to clean out the basement. On the metal shelves in the laundry room were stacked dozens of crumbling, dusty boxes of old tear sheets, photos, coffee mugs, mini cassettes and reporter notebooks from my years in newspapers. And letters! Oh, so many letters. Most dated from the 1980s, when I was a roving features writer for the Duluth News-Tribune in northern Minnesota.

They came typewritten on letterhead, scrawled on lined paper and hand-written in greeting cards. One — from a child — included a drawing of a wiry-haired woman, presumably me, clutching a reporter’s notebook and saying, “A ha.”

One letter thanked me for my “fine article” on a school bus driver. “ “It’s nice to see, especially on the front page, a positive story on pupil transportation.” I don’t remember writing a positive story on pupil transportation, but that’s not what’s important. What’s important is that my story meant something to this reader.

A story I wrote about a woman who crochets pleased her so much she wrote twice. In her first note, she told me: “A woman I don’t even know called to let me know that she found it interesting” Five months later, a second note: “I’m writing to thank you again.”

An anonymous letter thanked me for a story about abortion. “People don’t know what it’s like until they go through it,” she said. “I’m sorry that I don’t feel like I can sign my name.”

And one letter, from 1986, praised me while trashing my profession. “Everybody told me not to trust the news media,” the man wrote. “I was expecting a hatchet job. But I was pleasantly surprised after reading your report. Even my pastor said the article was good.”

The letters aren’t all filled with praise; one mentioned an error and several simply requested photo reprints or tear sheets. One pointed out, correctly, that if I had allowed anonymous sources my story would have been quite different. (That was in response to my poll of readers on who does more housework, men or women.)

I don’t remember most of the stories mentioned or any of the people who wrote me. But I saved all the letters. It’s good to be reminded that on the other side of everything we write there is someone reading it.

From huge issues like abortion to small issues like crocheting (and what, I now wonder, did this woman crochet?), the stories we tell touch people more than we will ever know. I wish that people still wrote letters; instead, we get emails, or comments online, or the occasional voice mail, none of which you can put in a box and rediscover 30 years later. More often, people are too busy to reach out to us at all.

But that doesn’t mean they’re not out there, paying attention. As one woman wrote,

“Thank you for listening to my story.”  And that, I think, is why we do what we do. A ha!

Laurie Hertzel is a freelance book critic and teaches in the low-residency MFA program in narrative nonfiction at the University of Georgia.

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By Jacqui Banaszynski

[dc]M[/dc]y fandom of American TV police/crime procedurals goes back to sharing Agatha Christie mysteries with my mother, then watching "Perry Mason" on a not-very-sharp black-and-white TV. I loved trying to ID the bad guy (spoiler: on TV, it's always the most famous guest actor). When things were resolved, I liked thinking back through the clues: What did the script give away that I missed? What were the clever bits of misdirection? The shows became more edgy and sophisticated over time: "Hill Street Blues," "CSI," "NCIS" and the endless iterations of "Law & Order."

This might seem a brain-candy distraction. But I'm convinced it's one of the ways I absorbed the elements of story: quick action at beginning, compressed backstory, character development, forward trajectory of plot, scenes and dialog.

Of late, I've been exploring British TV police procedurals. An affordable subscription to Acorn and BritBox could keep an armchair sleuth in the armchair way too often and long. But talk about edgy! I just finished the "Luther" series. Batman has nothing on the dark demons of John Luther.

Then there are the British "cozies," which are less gripping but somehow draw me in, mostly because I develop an affection for the characters. (Unlike Jessica Fletcher of "Murder She Wrote," who annoyed me long before Cabot Cove ran out of residents to get murdered.) And while I may be imagining it, the British procedurals seem to weave in a literary element seldom found in American TV — or maybe that's just the accents. The quick-quip chatter can also be deliciously wry.

A recent indulgence was the first season of "Grantchester," a PBS Masterpiece Mystery. Geordie Koeting (Robson Green) is a rumpled, cranky, no-nonsense detective. As happens in these things, he inherits as an unofficial partner the new village vicar, Sidney Chambers. (James Norton). Chambers is young, dashing and a more than a bit of a player. Both men are haunted by their service in World War II, which adds the occasional intrigue to their behaviors.

But it's the development of their unlikely relationship that makes the show for me. I was all in about 30 minutes into Episode 1, which a dour Koeting watched a recalcitrant witness go all gooey and chatty in a quick exchange with Chambers. When the conversation ends, Koeting scowls at Chambers:

"You know something."

Chambers: "People feel they can tell me things."

Koeting: "You're lucky. No one feels they can tell me anything."

It was a delicious moment as I thought about my own reporting career. I thought of the times I was Koeting, which no one wanted to tell me anything. But there also were times when, like Chambers, people seemed eager to spill, sometimes revealing information I really didn't need — or want.

That point comes up a bit later in the episode:

Koeting: "People talk to you, you say."

Chambers: "Entirely too much sometimes."

Koeting: "Hmmmm."

Which exactly summed up my thoughts: Hmmmm.

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By Jacqui Banaszynski

[dc]A[/dc] message popped up on my Facebook message box that captured, in short form, a not-infrequent lament I hear from reporters who long to stretch into deeper, more engaging stories but must write about specialty or technical subjects for niche publications, and/or for editors who seem to think that boring equals smart.

The writer in question gave permission to use the exchange, but with identifying information excised to protect the guilty — and said writer’s future contracts. Because money talks even when the writing yawns.

WRITER: Dang! Since you turned me into a narrative writer, I can’t do straight (unnamed subject) reporting anymore. Struggling right now to make a (unnamed publication) piece boring, which is their metric for important….

ME: Just write it as a series of bullet points. Then put those into long, passive sentences with subclauses. Oh, and be sure to include multiple useless transitions, like “Meanwhile,” “What this means,” “In other words.” You might tuck in a line that start with “The implications of ... “

WRITER: LOL — you completely nailed my old writing style!

ME: One must have multiple scores in one’s life playbook. (I think I just tortured a few metaphors.)

ME: BTW: the odd pronoun “one” is great for boring writing.

WRITER: Metaphors screaming in agony! Thanks for the reminders. Off to scatter the piece with commas and “ones.” And remember not to use a simple word when a long, pretentious one will do.

ME: You’re a fast learner.

ME: Postscript: Hit send and invoice!

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In the mood for an enduring romance? Mine came this week through the obituary of Marilyn Lovell, wife of Apollo astronaut Jim Lovell. The couple were portrayed by Kathleen Quinlan and Tom Hanks in Ron Howard’s 1995 film, “Apollo 13,” which retold the story of the failed moon mission.

The obit, by Alex Traub of The New York Times, was not overdone or overly long, which was one of its strengths. It followed a pretty standard obit structure. But it was chock-full of the kind of moments and mini-stories that, taken in aggregate, are the hallmark of a good obit.

Some of those moments were familiar echoes from the movie (which I’ve watched multiple times). It’s noteworthy that the best film scenes featuring Marilyn were, according to Traub’s reported piece, based pretty squarely in truth: A mountain on the moon is, indeed, named for her; she did sit with Jim Lovell’s mother and several top astronauts to watch the news as the crew made its never-been-done-before return to Earth; she faced the hordes of reporters who camped on her lawn for several days with equanimity; she reassured her children of their father’s return even as she, herself, must have been shaken to the core.

But the moment in Marilyn’s that was not in the film may go down as my favorite, and is now my standard for the most perfect gift line on Earth and beyond. On Christmas Day 1968, Jim Lovell was with the crew of Apollo 8, the first manned mission to orbit the moon. A package arrived at the Lovell home in Houston for Marilyn. It held a mink coat and a brief note: “To Marilyn from the Man in the Moon.”

That’s a fine bit of writing, and the kind of meaningful, true-life detail that should be in every profile we pursue.

Marilyn Lovell was 93. Jim Lovell continues to live in their long-time home of Lake Forest, Illinois. Marilyn also is survived by their four children, 11 grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.

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By Jacqui Banaszynski

[dc]E[/dc]njoy an end-of-summer delight, courtesy of Ashley Lodato, a columnist for the Methow Valley News in the far north Cascades of Washington state. Lodato's writing has caught our attention before; we featured a Why's This So Good analysis of an essay she wrote last summer about high school graduation.

This week, she made magic out of the mundane topic of zucchinis. If you have a vegetable garden or live pretty much anywhere anyone else has one, you will nod with amusement through Lodato's piece. Then I encourage you to read it a second time for the writing; it is a narrative structured in four acts, seasoned with just the right dash of metaphor.

(Warning: The story makes use of exclamation points, which some readers may find offensive. But these work, so get over yourself!)

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By Jacqui Banaszynski

[dc]I[/dc] sat down to watch the State of the Union address this week out of a sense of obligation and, to be honest, a somewhat dark curiosity. How scripted would it be? How predictable? How long? Mostly, how boring? President Biden isn't known as a great orator. He practices, hard and long, but still stumbles into an occasional stutter. He rambles and repeats himself. His favorite word seems to be "Look.," which always precedes a key message he's trying to deliver. Many of the pundits, on both sides of the political chasm, actually think he won some votes purely by virtue of being a calm antidote to four years of Donald Trump.

As anyone paying attention knows by now, boring was not part of the script Tuesday night. Or, if it was in the script, Biden veered from it with a few moments of surprise and rapier politicking. The next morning, one social media commentator actually wrote that the president delivered a "can of whoop-ass." (Don't know what that term means? Google it. It's a real thing.)

My reading of post-speech coverage was a bit more restrained, but still offered moment after moment of writing gems worth learning from. Here's a sampler:

In piece from The New Yorker, political columnist Susan B. Glasser used sensory descriptions to relay bits of the evening. She wrote about Biden's determination to restore “traditions of cross-aisle cooperation in a capital made ever more sclerotic by Donald Trump's four years of chaotic rule." She made mention of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy's attempt to get his fellow Republicans to behave with "audible shushing."

USA Today columnist Rex Huppke can swing from the sincere to the satirical to the downright snarky. He captured a moment — to some, the moment — of the night like this:

(Biden) went off script regularly, parrying Republican lawmakers who heckled him, at one point backing the whole party into a corner and getting them to swear to protect Medicare and Social Security benefits.

I’ve never seen anything like it in a State of the Union speech – they ran at him like a pack of lemmings and, with a wink and a grin, he politely directed them to the cliff.

(BTW, if you can access it, read the State of the Union alt-speech Huppke wrote. Think of it as Biden Unplugged, or perhaps What the Far Right Heard.)

Even Heather Cox Richardson offer a wow moment. Her daily “Letter from an American” newsletter is as informed, clear, calm and accessible as anything summarizing the uncalm world of today’s politics. She’s a genius at unwonking the wonk, and is not prone to literary preening. But she understands the power of a revelatory detail, as she demonstrated in a paragraph about the political divide over assault rifles.

Biden led the fight to get them banned in 1994, but when Republicans refused to reauthorize that law, it expired and mass shootings tripled. Gun safety is popular in the U.S., and Republicans, many of whom have been wearing AR-15 pins on their lapels, booed him.

A beat or event that is presumed to be boring need not be if you learn to see it through the layered lenses of good writing. Politics, especially, is a world of high drama and high stakes that is too often reduced to bureaucratic drone or overhype analysis. That serves need the public nor the press.

But reporters who can follow the gamesmanship, the asides and the revelatory details make coverage both accessible and meaningful.

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[dc]A[/dc] note from a professional friend landed in my inbox a few days ago, with this quick header:

“... the best lede I’ve ever read.”

So I clicked. (Wouldn’t you?) It took me to a piece by Dana Milbank, opinion columnist for the Washington Post, about, the final resting place of Ivana Trump: a lone grave with a simple stone marker near the first tee of the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey.

In his forced (and, he hopes, temporary) retirement, defeated former president Donald Trump has come up with a new undertaking. He’s undertaking.

This could seem a too-easy pun. But Milbank does what Milbank does, pushing the pun as far as he can to deliver his brand of political satire. (The bio tagline on Milbank's columns says that "He sketches the foolish, the fallacious and the felonious in politics.") Dead-and-buried references are sprinkled like ashes throughout the next 13 paragraphs, which lay out Trump's latest tax-dodging business enterprise, until it reaches the fatal conclusion:

“AMERICAN DEMOCRACY, July 4, 1776 - January 6, 2021”

Puns, like cliches, can be cheap writing tricks. But sometimes a subject begs full-on snark. In this case, Milbank had plenty to work with.

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Earlier this month, we posted a short “One Great Moment” piece on a dazzling line of dialog from the new-this-season Netflix movie “A Boy Called Christmas.” Dame Maggie Smith is telling three fidgety children a story. When they want to know why they have to listen, she gently scolds: “Because the universe is made of stories, not atoms.”

The post prompted a Storyboard reader to send a short email about a memory it sparked about an essay she wrote almost 20 years ago. That essay was sparked by a line in a poem that contained the line we quoted from the movie. Here it is, a three-paragraph origin story, shared with permission:

The Dame Maggie Smith “One Great Moment” spoke to me today. I loved how her character borrowed my favorite line from “The Speed of Darkness” by poet Muriel Rukeyser. Twenty years ago I did the same.

I worked in a public health lab, promoting scientists’ research but being more comfortable in the company of storytellers. I turned to personal essays for a while, including one that spun off my finding a pavement block on a pedestrian bridge engraved with “molecule.” Here’s the relevant paragraph from 2003. Thanks for the opportunity for me to walk down memory lane and reacquaint myself with those times and lines.

…”Outside my office door hangs a microscopic sign, easily overlooked. If you slow down, lean into the wall, and read the fine print you will be rewarded with a line from the poet Muriel Rukeyser. She proclaims: ‘The universe is made of stories, not atoms.’ Or molecules, I might add.”

Kathy S Zdeb

Chatham, NY

Intrigued, I did a bit more research and learned that Rukeyser, who died in 1980, was a broadband writer — poetry, plays, biographies, children’s books — and a radical political activist. She mentored an up-and-coming generation of feminist poets. And especially interesting, given the job Zdeb mentioned in her note, is that Rukeyser’s poetry often embraced science.

I’m a great believer that good stories inspire other good stories. And writers do often repeat, borrow, pass along lines and rhythms they absorb. Great care must be taken, of course, to attribute when convention, law and ethics require. But echoes happen and can inspire new, original writing and new meaning when used in a different context.

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