Our latest Notable Narrative concerns the recent earthquake in Haiti but takes place in a public hospital in the Dominican Republic. St. Petersburg Times reporter Meg Laughlin finds one doctor who has done 22 amputations in two days, and another who says he has done 32 in just one day. Many reporters in the region [...]
Tag Archives: St. Petersburg Times
Sherman Alexie, Garry Kasparov, The Caravan and more! It’s grab bag Friday…
January 29, 2010 – 3:36 pm
Take a gander at some of the more interesting writing we’ve seen lately. These pieces are more or less narrative, and come at storytelling from different angles, but are all are worth checking out. An Indian narrative journalism magazine called The Caravan launched this month. Or perhaps re-launched might be the better term, as publisher Delhi Press [...]
Tyler Cowen rails against narrative—can stories make us stupid?
November 19, 2009 – 2:12 pm
Earlier this month at the mid-Atlantic TEDx in Baltimore, blogging economist Tyler Cowen gave a 16-minute talk about the dangers of narrative. He spoke about the oft-discussed universal stories we use to make sense of events, such as the quest, a stranger comes to town, comedy, and tragedy. But he quickly dove into why he distrusts the [...]
Bursting into song and leaping out the window
November 4, 2009 – 2:04 pm
We often highlight stories from reporters who are well-known in the world of narrative journalism, but a lot of unsung writers slip narratives into print and online daily. Here are some moving stories with sharp scenes or imagery from three people we bet you’ve never heard of.
“Sacia’s Promise,” from Kaitlin Manry of The (Everett) Herald:
“She remembers waking up in the middle of the night, just 2 or 3 years old. Her nightgown is wet. So is her bed. She walks into the living room, calling for her mom. She’s not there. Sacia instead finds a stranger, a man, dividing piles of little white rocks spread across the coffee table. The pearly white stones are like baby teeth and crumble when he touches them. She runs back to her bed and stays up all night, kneeling on wet sheets, waiting for a mother who never comes.”
Gangrey’s Ben Montgomery wants to grab you by the shirt collar
October 29, 2009 – 2:04 pm
[The second in an occasional series aimed at helping readers find online resources that focus on narrative journalism.]
For more than four years, Gangrey.com has rounded up the best print narratives on a daily basis. Founder Ben Montgomery, who is also a reporter with Florida’s St. Petersburg Times, talks here about his personal motivation for starting his site and what he thinks narrative journalism can do.
On what makes a good Gangrey story:
Does it have something that’s surprising? Is it entertaining? Will it keep my attention? Is there some device being used that I’ve never seen before?
And on the multimedia components for his latest print narrative:
I couldn’t have pulled that off if it had required more effort from me. We wouldn’t have achieved the same level of—I don’t want to say excellence—the same level of story for either of those things, if both [the print story and the video] had required my attention. If journalists are required to write the story and compose the multimedia elements going into it, both parts tend to suffer.
Starting with pictures
September 25, 2009 – 10:07 pm
The St. Petersburg Times’ latest narrative project started with photographer John Pendygraft’s wife giving him an assignment. A medical reporter, she had been covering the policy issues of the health care debates, but rarely got more into her pieces than a quote from those struggling with healthcare issues. After meeting a woman who was going through insulin [...]
For Their Own Good
July 10, 2009 – 12:00 am
July’s first Notable Narrative tells a story of abuse at The Florida School for Boys. St. Petersburg Times reporters Ben Montgomery and Waveney Ann Moore use the account of one man—William Haynes, Jr.—as the core of their piece, while managing to fold in more than a hundred years of violence at the Marianna facility. A [...]
Flight 1549 Survivor Got Out of the Hudson,
Back into the Air
May 1, 2009 – 12:00 am
This month’s first Notable Narrative invites the reader in just before takeoff and then follows Casey Jones—who survived the U.S. Airways crash landing in the Hudson River—as he returns to the airways over Manhattan. The St. Petersburg Times’ Lane DeGregory tells a story so spare it feels almost incomplete on the first read. But details [...]
The Girl in the Window
November 7, 2008 – 12:00 am
“The Girl in the Window” is the story of Dani, a child so removed from normal human community she has been labeled “feral.” In this St. Petersburg Times piece, Lane DeGregory walks along a delicate tightrope, exploring an abused child’s situation without compounding her exploitation. We found ourselves drawn in, not only by inherent interest [...]
Shuttle Diplomacy
November 12, 2006 – 2:12 pm
Allison focuses his profile on Nelson’s volunteer mission on the space shuttle, using details about Nelson’s behavior on the shuttle to portray him as a slightly nerdy politician who’s also—surprise, suprise—just a little opportunistic.
