Tag Archives: Esquire

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, [...]

Charles Pierce on the future of narrative journalism: “anyone not concerned isn’t paying attention”

I talked this week with Charles Pierce about the end-of-decade summary he did for Esquire. Pierce, who also works for The Boston Globe Magazine, talks (and perhaps writes—see end of interview) faster than any human being alive today. Here, he offers his thoughts on dystopian thinking, recent stories he’s liked, and how good writers get turned [...]

Notable Narrative: Esquire’s Charles Pierce on the lost decade

In the universe of Charles Pierce, the decade just discarded was not a keeper. It’s hard to argue otherwise, but in the hands of the unerringly unsettling Pierce, the litany of catastrophes—9/11, war, war again, Katrina, and the economic collapse—takes a back seat to worry about our ever-increasing distance from reality. In his Esquire article “The [...]

Esquire’s Tom Junod looks for “One Good Man”

Esquire’s Tom Junod crawls under his subjects’ public masks and starts asking questions. Junod has long specialized in profiling symbols such as a man falling from the north tower of the World Trade Center on 9/11 and the modern would-be mercenary.
His latest profile, “Can One Good Man Redeem a Nation for the Sins of Guantánamo?,”begins [...]

Interview with Chris Jones: Building a mystery

Excerpts from a September 2009 interview with Chris Jones on “The End of Mystery,” in which a team of investigators recovers bodies and determines the cause of a helicopter crash off the coast of Newfoundland:
Q: How did you find out about the investigation into the Newfoundland crash?
A: I live in Ottawa, Canada. This was a big story in Canada—it [...]

Dissecting disaster: Chris Jones’ “The End of Mystery”

The first Notable Narrative for September takes a police procedural as its template. The article begins with the loss of a Sikorsky S-92 helicopter in March 2009 off the coast of Newfoundland in Canada. This Esquire story from Chris Jones tracks the investigators who work to unravel the cause and manner of death for all [...]