Our first Editors’ Roundtable of the month looked at a story from Lane DeGregory of the St. Petersburg Times, in which a young couple arrives in Florida hoping to start a new life. DeGregory won the Pulitzer Prize for feature writing in 2009 for “The Girl in the Window” and has received many other awards [...]
Tag Archives: Lane DeGregory
July Editors’ Roundtable No. 1: the St. Petersburg Times’ snapshot between before and after
July 5, 2011 – 1:07 pm
For the first Roundtable of July, our editors looked at “Diving headlong into a sunny paradise” by Lane DeGregory of the St. Petersburg Times. The story follows a young Wisconsin couple on their first day starting a new life in Florida. Appearing in print on Memorial Day, DeGregory’s piece was edited by Mike Wilson, the [...]
Roy Peter Clark on “the power of the parts” for storytelling
November 9, 2010 – 4:36 pm
Roy Peter Clark holds the post of senior scholar at the Poynter Institute, and as such is one of narrative journalism’s hardest-working midwives. You may have already encountered him here on Storyboard or through his books on writing, including “Coaching Writers” and more recently, “The Glamour of Grammar.”
We had hoped to bring you highlights from his [...]
Lane DeGregory’s 10 tips for editors at AASFE 2010
October 27, 2010 – 1:30 pm
Pulitzer Prize winner and St. Petersburg Times reporter Lane DeGregory spoke at the American Association of Sunday and Feature Editors Conference in Florida earlier this month. She has made a name for herself as a reporter and a storyteller during more than two decades of newspaper reporting. Singing the praises of the editors she’s worked [...]
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). [...]
The Guardian essay on Hindu super-temples? It might be news to you (and me)
November 9, 2009 – 3:05 pm
Talking about narrative journalism, The St. Petersburg Times’ Lane DeGregory once told me
“One of the stupidest stories I ever did had the biggest response. It was an ‘up all night’ piece about what happens between midnight and 6:00 am. I had all these old ladies calling me up and saying, ‘I’m never up that late, and I didn’t know about any of this.’ It was so gratifying to take readers someplace.”
Taking readers someplace they are unlikely or unable to go is a prime service narrative can provide. Witness these two nicely done but very different stories:
[caption id="attachment_972" align="alignleft" width="101" caption="Abhinav Ramnarayan"]
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Supermarket, superstores—why not a supertemple? “The Many Gods of Ilford,” a Guardian trend essay on multi-god Hindu temples in former recreation centers, touches on religion and tolerance while revealing that cockroaches can evoke nostalgia. A few useful posted comments about disability, caste, and monotheism add to Abhinav Ramnarayan’s original piece.
Over at The Daily Beast, Tim Mohr’s “Did Punk Rock Tear Down the Wall?” looks at the East German ’80s punk scene and recounts the career of Die Anderen (“the Others”), a band that straddled the East-West divide.
What other keyhole views into history or a community have generated memorable narratives? We’d like to hear from you.
