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Tag Archives: Tampa Bay Times

Prize storytelling: The 2013 Pulitzers

At some point, we’ll round up some of the better deadline storytelling from the past two weeks’ historic news out of Boston and Texas and Washington, D.C., and Mississippi and Cambridge and Watertown, but let’s end the week on a positive note, by remembering the great work of this year’s recently announced Pulitzer winner and finalists. In the features category, John Branch of the [...]

Just one question … for Gene Weingarten, on the Jeffrey MacDonald case

Everybody’s read his latest? Great. WILMINGTON, N.C. — They are old men now, the doctor and the lawyer, ancient adversaries confronting each other one last time. The doctor shuffles into the courtroom, his feet in socks and slippers, his ankles in chains. Once a swaggering bon vivant with a Maserati, a yacht and a playboy lifestyle, [...]

Just one question … for Lane DeGregory, on the presidential hugger

My Pulitzer-winning pod-mate Lane DeGregory in the Tampa Bay Times, on the Florida pizza man who famously gave Barack Obama that bear hug: FORT PIERCE — After talking to MSNBC and Inside Edition, while waiting to be miked for Wolf Blitzer, Scott Van Duzer, 46, tried to fit in two slices of pepperoni pizza and a Gatorade on Monday during what had [...]

Reporting and writing “Never Let Go” — inside Kelley Benham French’s remarkable series

Kelley Benham French’s “Never Let Go,” about the extremely premature birth of her daughter, Juniper, was included in Storyboard’s Best of Narrative list for 2012, and our final Notable Narrative of the year. The five-part series ran last month in the Tampa Bay Times. French’s colleague and close friend Ben Montgomery spoke with her recently about the story. [...]

Storyboard 2013: New year, new features

Storytelling in 2013 — how will it look? Sound? How will it make us feel? Who’s doing it well, and how did they do it, and what can the rest of us learn from that work? We’re looking forward to finding out. Storyboard spent 2012 expanding our content and trying out new ways to engage readers. [...]

The best in narrative, 2012: Storyboard’s top picks in audio, magazines, newspapers and online

Welcome to Storyboard’s first annual year-end roundup of top storytelling: 34 of our favorite pieces in audio, magazines, newspapers and online, with three of the categories guest curated by Mark Armstrong (online), Julia Barton and Julie Shapiro (audio), and Ben Montgomery, Michael Kruse and Thomas Lake (newspapers). This was a strong year for storytelling, and it was hard to choose. You’ll find pieces that [...]

Amy Ellis Nutt and the wreck of the Lady Mary, Part 1

This is the third in an occasional series of line-by-lines with narrative writers and their work, adapted from a project called Annotation Tuesday! on Tumblr. Earlier, we featured the Tampa Bay Times‘ Michael Kruse and his story about a woman who disappeared inside her own home; and  Jon Franklin‘s classic “Mrs. Kelly’s Monster,” the inaugural winner of the [...]

Hurricane Sandy: story forms

The Hurricane Sandy storylines are still unfolding, but one thing became clear on Monday as winds and water overtook New York City and New Jersey in historic proportions: Digital media deepened the transformation of the disaster narrative. Here’s some of what’s out there today in various storytelling forms: The New York Times’ Tumblr-like live update stream was the cleanest [...]

“What’s on your syllabus?”

Every narrative journalist can point to a story or a book, or two, that changed their lives, and that made them want to tell true stories. What story does it for you? Where was your love born? When we asked about influential writing via Twitter, answers came in a flurry. Wright Thompson said North Toward Home, [...]

Writing 9/11: Erin Sullivan on survivors, intros, collaboration, inspiration and the importance of working with what you have

We chose Erin Sullivan’s story about a 9/11 survivor as our latest Notable Narrative for the usual reasons − interesting characters; strong, memorable writing − but also because it contained the watermark of a takeaway for surviving trauma. “Watermark” because, as in all good narrative, the writer stays out of the way and lets the story unfold [...]