This week’s Notable Narrative recounts the murder of Claude Neal by a lynch mob in 1934 and introduces his family, which has been waiting for decades for someone to name the killers and hold them to account. Tampa Bay Times reporter Ben Montgomery talked with us by phone this week about reporting and writing “Spectacle: [...]
Tag Archives: Ben Montgomery
“Why’s this so good?” No. 22: Hank Stuever on
9-ish
November 29, 2011 – 11:12 am
There are two stories from the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001, that to me remain better than all the others. R.W. Apple wrote a news analysis that ran on the front of the New York Times on Sept. 12. Hank Stuever wrote an essay that ran on the front of the Style section of the [...]
Brady Dennis on “After the sky fell”
November 2, 2011 – 12:54 pm
This week’s “Why’s this so good?” post looked at Brady Dennis’ 296-word story about a toll booth operator’s love for the wife he lost to cancer. The piece ran in 2005 as part of the St. Petersburg Times’ occasional series “300 words.” Dennis has since moved on to The Washington Post, where he is an [...]
“Why’s this so good?” No. 18: Brady Dennis goes short
November 1, 2011 – 10:44 am
A few years ago, a bunch of us were sitting around the front porch of this crumpled old resort in the Catskills, knocking back drinks and talking shop. I can’t remember how it began, but when the sun went down we developed a game: Tell a story in a minute.
It started off cool enough, and [...]
Ben Montgomery explores a mystery: “This is a story about grief”
May 5, 2011 – 11:17 am
Yesterday our Editors’ Roundtable looked at “When a diver goes missing, a deep cave is scene of a deeper mystery,” by Ben Montgomery. An enterprise reporter at the St. Petersburg Times, Montgomery was a 2010 Pulitzer finalist with the Times’ project “For Their Own Good,” which we featured on this site. He talked with me by [...]
May Editors’ Roundtable: St. Petersburg Times dives into missing man mystery
May 4, 2011 – 11:02 am
This month, the Editors’ Roundtable looks at “When a diver goes missing, a deep cave is scene of a deeper mystery” by Ben Montgomery of the St. Petersburg Times. The story, our first newspaper narrative for the Roundtable, tells the tale of Ben McDaniel, who disappeared at Vortex Spring in August of last year.
Each month, we talk [...]
Tom French on zoo stories, narrative nonfiction and the pleasures of playing anthropologist
September 14, 2010 – 12:38 pm
In 2007, St. Petersburg Times reporter Tom French delivered a nine-part series about Tampa’s Lowry Park Zoo, which led to the writing of “Zoo Story,” published in July. In his book, French focuses on the lives of a number of mammals, including Enshalla (a tiger), Herman (a chimp) and Lex Salisbury (the director of the zoo). [...]
Hank Stuever on story structure, really reporting Christmas and the problem with the “sacred space” approach to narrative
August 20, 2010 – 2:23 pm
Washington Post reporter Hank Stuever writes in a variety of narrative forms, from books to punchy television reviews and features. His latest book, “Tinsel: A Search for America’s Christmas Present,” is based on time he spent in Frisco, Texas, beginning in 2006. Making good on the title’s evocations of both sweetness and Scrooge, Stuever explores [...]
What we’re reading, second edition: in which we offer soccer balls, the Book of Revelation and a visit to the Khyber Pass
June 30, 2010 – 3:38 pm
In our new installment of written work worth checking out, we encourage you to think about the history of the soccer ball, the awesomeness that was the 1975 Cincinnati Reds, the expanding ramifications of the oil disaster in the Gulf, the many things we receive from our parents, and one former Marine’s problem with the [...]
