Yesterday on the Storyboard, we looked at a new approach to narrative by focusing on Paige Williams’ self-published project “Finding Dolly Freed.” That post considered the possiblities for crowdfunded narrative journalism, but we were intrigued enough with the rest of what Williams had to say to offer more of it here. Below are excerpts from this [...]
Monthly Archives: January 2010
Hello, Dolly! Radiohead journalism and the future of narrative
When a journalist in love with a story gets turned down by magazine after magazine then sells a piece only to see it killed, what’s the next step? If you’re Paige Williams, you take a page from the guerrilla journalism handbook and publish it yourself.
Williams, whose “Finding Dolly Freed” debuted last week, installed a donation [...]
Science narratives: more focused on story than facts?
A storytelling approach to science can make for bad journalism, according to a Myles Allen opinion piece that ran last month in The Guardian (UK). Writing about the theft and publication of emails from climate change researchers at the University of East Anglia, Allen (who is head of the Climate Dynamics group at the University [...]
Mike Levine Writers Workshop: a chance for reporters to focus on story
Calling all storytellers: Is there a story you’ve been dying to do, or even trying to write, but you know you need help? If so, the Mike Levine Writers Workshop is looking for you. Did we mention it’s free? All you have to do is get to the Catskill Mountains in New York for the [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Errol Morris in The New York Times on still photography and context
So much depends upon a stuffed Mickey Mouse lying in the debris of a bombed-out building. In a weekend post on The New York Times site, Opinionator Errol Morris takes on distinctions between art, journalism and propaganda in “It Was All Started by a Mouse (Part 1).”
Morris looks at (and reposts) a set of images [...]
