How will digital opportunities change the way we tell stories? Earlier this month in New York City, a roundtable of journalists from major media outlets and community-oriented news organizations met to consider new narrative possibilities. Funded by Shell, the afternoon symposium was hosted by the International Center of Photography and co-sponsored by Frontline.
The discussion wasn’t [...]
Monthly Archives: February 2010
Paul Raeburn, Ira Glass, and just some of the ways a story can go wrong
Yesterday, Paul Raeburn at the Knight Science Journalism Tracker took the stuffing out of a New York Times medical piece. The story, by Gardiner Harris, reveals a secret recording of a 2007 meeting between a cardiologist and executives at a pharmaceutical company. Raeburn dinged it for both structure and content, writing that “sometimes a poorly [...]
Narrative nonfiction events and conferences–is there something here for you?
While tracking digital narrative experiments, we at Storyboard also aim to keep readers informed about the world of traditional print narratives. Today we’ve compiled a list of upcoming events for fans who want to hear from classic storytellers or learn elements of craft. Here are just a few of the opportunities available, in chronological order:
The Society of [...]
Rick Moody’s “Amazing Tale” invites readers to step right up
Our latest Notable Narrative plays a wonderful game of fulfilling expectations in surprising ways. In the January 2010 issue of Details, Rick Moody’s “The Amazing Tale of the High School Quarterback Turned Lesbian Filmmaker” uses a bait-and-switch approach to write about a transgendered person on the verge of attending her 20th high school reunion.
The title [...]
The Small Story: long live the community-minded newspaper narrative
Cara Solomon sweats the small stuff.
After a failed career as a television news intern and eight successful years as a print reporter, Solomon left her newspaper job on the West Coast to return home to Boston. Holding down a day job as an editor of a start-up Web site, she began to devote her free time [...]
Peggy Nelson on new media narratives: “Every Twitter account is a character”
We talked this week with Peggy Nelson, a new media artist who has spent the last several years doing digital and virtual storytelling. While Nelson’s work is rooted in conceptual art rather than journalism, she has created stories in nearly every medium, including some we hadn’t thought of (like PowerPoint and iPhone Apps). Nelson came [...]
Boston Bookfuturists look at mapping, charting new narratives
Continuing the “future of narrative” theme for this week, today we look at some of the experimental stories discussed at the first-ever Boston Bookfuturists Meetup on January 29, hosted by Joanne McNeil of Tomorrow Museum. Nieman Lab director Josh Benton attended and brought back some links to interesting new approaches to narrative.
The discussion touched on “Mr. Plimpton’s [...]
How are you doing? Laura Mayer shares the stories that rise out of small talk
Storyboard is always looking for new approaches to storytelling that could be useful for journalists, so we were curious when a reader sent us a link to the How Are You Doing project, which invites people to call a 1-800 number and leave a message about, well, how they’re doing. Laura Mayer, a recent graduate of [...]
Meg Laughlin on reporting from Haiti: “this is the face of the nation now”
St. Petersburg Times reporter Meg Laughlin recently spent eight days in Haiti and the Dominican Republic covering the aftermath of the earthquake. She managed to file a series of short narratives, mostly at the rate of one a day. Earlier this week, she talked with us about finding stories with local elements, using small moments [...]
Notable Narrative: Meg Laughlin chronicles survivors’ suffering in Haiti
Our latest Notable Narrative concerns the recent earthquake in Haiti but takes place in a public hospital in the Dominican Republic. St. Petersburg Times reporter Meg Laughlin finds one doctor who has done 22 amputations in two days, and another who says he has done 32 in just one day.
Many reporters in the region noticed [...]
