When it comes to wildlife narratives, writer Bryan Christy wants more accountability from reporters.
Christy wrote us in response to our Friday issue of the Narrative Digest, which featured coverage of a zoo, a history of animal experimentation, and an essay on a vet in Sierra Leone, among other articles. He added another a item to the list of issues raised by [...]
Category Archives: talking about story
Walk on the wild side: animal stories that don’t stand up
Chris Jones, Roger Ebert and the possibilities of online narrative (or “does this story ever end?”)
When it comes to writing profiles, Esquire’s Chris Jones is used to getting the last word. But a few weeks ago, when Jones worked his storytelling mojo on Roger Ebert, he took on someone who had his own platform and his own audience.
“I knew Roger was writing about the story,” Jones told us via email, [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Yahoo! Sports’ Dan Wetzel on digital narratives: “you’ve got to fight for every reader”
Storyboard contributor (and Charlotte Observer columnist) Tommy Tomlinson recently sent us a link to a sports narrative by Dan Wetzel, describing it as a great example of a story done on deadline. Tomlinson noted the pressures faced by newspaper reporters covering athletic events, adding that Wetzel’s story made him “wonder if newspaper people should change their strategy on this kind of story—maybe [...]
Interview: Brenda Ann Kenneally on recording the lives of “Upstate Girls”
Earlier this week, we talked with Brenda Ann Kenneally, an independent photojournalist who chronicles coming of age in post-industrial America. Her project, “Upstate Girls: What Became of Collar City” won first place at the World Press Awards for Daily Life Stories in 2009, and provided the basis for the collaborative multimedia project “Women of Troy,” our [...]
