Our latest Editors’ Roundtable looks at Corinne Reilly’s print series “A Chance in Hell.” Part of a multimedia project from The Virginian-Pilot, the series brings readers snapshots from the lives of combat hospital staff in Kandahar. Reilly covers the military for the Pilot and joined the paper in 2009 after four years working at the [...]
Tag Archives: The Virginian-Pilot
Corinne Reilly on trauma medicine in Afghanistan, after a decade of war
September 16, 2011 – 3:03 pm
September Editors’ Roundtable No. 1: The Virginian-Pilot on saving soldiers in Afghanistan
September 15, 2011 – 7:07 pm
Our first Roundtable of September examines “A Chance in Hell,” by Corinne Reilly. Visiting a combat hospital in Kandahar, Afghanistan, Reilly shows the endless challenges of trauma medicine just a helicopter flight away from the front lines. The project, which includes photos and video by Ross Taylor, ran last month in The Virginian-Pilot.
For full bios of [...]
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). [...]
Jamestown Mystery: A Grave Story
February 14, 2007 – 11:31 am
This is another narative-as-scientific-mystery by Tennant, in which she creates suspense by drawing us into the lives of early settlers, raising a question and proceeding—with strong voice and narrative structure—to answer it. Along the way we are reminded how easy we have in the 21st century developed world. This is an original and unusual newspaper [...]
The Fever
April 14, 2006 – 1:14 pm
There are two main characters in this series: first, the illness itself, which ravaged Norfolk and Plymouth, Va., in 1855. It killed one out of three people in the communities it reached. Its effects form a summary narrative of the devastation. This narrative functions in part as a sort of sociological study of the impact [...]
Stations of the Cross Lead Priest into Contemplation
July 7, 2005 – 2:42 pm
In using the Lord’s Prayer and a Christian parable as structural devices, this piece takes on a particular religious perspective more than we’re comfortable with. But it’s got a fine narrative structure, a distinctive authorial presence and a nice sense of narrative arc—all achieved with very few words.
Shepherd’s Sermon
April 4, 2005 – 1:57 pm
Maria Carrillo, deputy managing editor at The Virginian-Pilot, gave us some background on this piece: “Lon heard about a minister who was dying and fighting to come to grips with it, just like all those people he’d ministered to over the years. Lon went out and talked to him a couple of times, interviewing for [...]
The Dark Side of Valentine’s Day
March 22, 2005 – 4:56 pm
We like the lead in this piece, the setting of tone. We appreciate the reporter’s attention to certain details, such as the image on the state seal: “Carlson sits beneath a gold rendition of the commonwealth’s seal, Virtue standing triumphant over the fallen body of Tyranny. Virtue is a woman. Tyranny is a man. They’re [...]
