Environmental journalists often feel married to the tragic narrative. Pollution, extinction, invasion: The stories are endless, and endlessly the same. Our editors see the pattern and bury us in the back pages; our readers see it and abandon us on … Read more
Our latest Editors’ Roundtable looks at Cynthia Gorney’s story “Too Young To Wed,” from the June issue of National Geographic. In addition to her work for National Geographic, Gorney is a professor at the Berkeley Graduate School of … Read more
Our second Roundtable of August examines “Too Young To Wed: The Secret World of Child Brides,” by Cynthia Gorney. Heading to Yemen and the Indian state of Rajasthan, Gorney meets a series of child brides and tackles the complicated … Read more
When the Mississippi River recently surged down through the middle of the country, a lot of people I follow on Twitter took the opportunity to point to John McPhee’s marvelous 1987 article “Atchafalaya.”I took their advice and revisited the … Read more
Just a few minutes talking with Paul Nicklen reveals his compulsion to educate the world. Ask a question about his polar adventures, and he segues quickly into arthropods, krill and dangerous drops in the levels of polar sea ice. He … Read more
Paul Nicklen, a photographer with National Geographic, was going to call his latest collection of images Bipolar Obsession on a lark, to reflect his trips to both poles. He settled instead on Polar Obsession and freely admits that … Read more
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 … Read more
We talked with photojournalist Ed Kashi about visual storytelling, advocacy journalism, and his photo series on Trans Amadi Slaughter, an abattoir on the Niger Delta.
Q: At the Digest, we’ve talked about whether a series of photos needs to work the same way as a print story: a character, a conflict, rising tension, climax, resolution. Do you think a photo montage or a slide show functions by the same rules? Or does it have a different narrative structure?
A: I think it can go both ways. The beauty or the exciting aspect of multimedia is that we can try new things. It seems like some proponents are saying there’s only one way to tell a narrative: the beginning, the middle, transformation, and the end. There’s nothing wrong with classic modes of storytelling. They’re effective, and they’ll continue to be effective. There’s a reason they work.
Read full interview ... Read more
In our second Notable Narrative for August, North Korean defectors ride a train 2,000 miles across China in an effort to make their way to South Korea. National Geographic’s Tom O’Neill accompanies them and then explores what escape means … Read more