This piece was part of a package that won a 2005 Pulitzer Prize in explanatory reporting. Cook uses narrative in this piece to show the “real people” who could be helped by advances in stem cell technology. It’s a sad story about the parents of an ill boy whose hopes for stem cells outpace their [...]
Tag Archives: The Boston Globe
What Makes People Gay?
February 13, 2007 – 1:03 pm
A model of clear explication of complex ideas, this piece shows how a sense of arc and suspense can be achieved in the form of amiable-narrator-in-pursuit-of-ideas. Swidey begins the piece with a scene in which identical twins show marked differences. He thus poses a question: How is it that in a set of identical twins, [...]
After the Fall
January 18, 2007 – 12:00 am
According to this series, 29 percent of elderly people who break a hip die within a year. This is higher than the one-year rate of death following a stroke. The series is very effective in highlighting this surprising problem in an accessible and humanizing way. It also illuminates some of the reasons for the death [...]
The Lessons of the Father
October 25, 2006 – 2:10 pm
We asked Swidey to tell us about his work on this story. Here’s what he e-mailed us: “I knew what I didn’t want to write: the birth-to-current-day profile of Mitt Romney, the Massachusetts governor and presidential hopeful. That had been done and done again. As Romney’s national stature rose in the past year, the media [...]
Reliving the Morning of Death
September 17, 2006 – 11:40 am
This narrative succeeds because of the clarity with which it sequences events and because of its evocative detail. Its wrenching emotional content springs from such detail: the mother’s instructions for caring for her children, the pilot’s farm, the cell phone calls home. Unlike many of the early 9/11 reconstructions, Zuckoff also follows one of the [...]
Facing Famine
July 20, 2006 – 12:00 am
This essay appeared in Best American Travel Writing 2004. In much of his writing, Haines is a cross-cultural guide, seeking to take his readers into foreign worlds, to help them experience another culture’s deep difference—and also its humanity. In this piece, Haines explores an Ethiopian community desperate for water. The movement in the story, the [...]
Dear World
May 9, 2006 – 3:55 pm
Viser writes about a young man, Zack Weinsten, who has “started an unusual process: healing by blog.” Weinstein writes about his experiences on his blog following a spinal injury that paralyzed him from the chest down. Viser alternates excerpts from the blog with sections that tell his character’s story and develop his character. It’s not [...]
Rakan’s War
May 5, 2006 – 11:10 am
Rakan is a 12-year-old who, through extraordinary intervention by several powerful men, is flown to an American hospital from Iraq following the death of his parents and his own injury from American fire. It’s a compelling tale. We liked the characterization of Rakan, who comes across as both lovable and bitter, innocent and wise. We [...]
Critical Care
May 2, 2006 – 3:31 pm
We liked this vivid and engaging study in character. Allen follows the struggles of a novice nurse as she begins training in the most grueling of nursing domains, the ICU at Mass General Hospital. Her teacher is a strong-willed, skilled veteran nurse. Both women are opinionated, headstrong; their partnership and rivalry, and the development of [...]
Choosing Naia
March 15, 2005 – 3:05 pm
This six-part narrative is now a classic, instructive for its solid structure, rounded characters and close reporting. Notice the ways that Zuckoff weaves medical background and the details of Naia’s case into the narrative. He also reports finely, choosing pertinent details, ones that heighten the emotional valence of the piece. Note this early example: Zuckoff [...]
