The thing about being the first pick in the NBA draft – especially if you’re 19-year-old Kwame Brown, the youngest No. 1 pick ever – is that you become the subject of a lot of newspaper stories.
By April 2002, the end of Brown’s rookie season with the Washington Wizards, dozens of reporters had dutifully written profiles about [...]
Tag Archives: The Washington Post
“Why’s this so good?” No. 30: Sally Jenkins picks Kwame Brown
January 31, 2012 – 12:02 pm
“Why’s this so good?” No. 22: Hank Stuever on
9-ish
November 29, 2011 – 11:12 am
There are two stories from the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001, that to me remain better than all the others. R.W. Apple wrote a news analysis that ran on the front of the New York Times on Sept. 12. Hank Stuever wrote an essay that ran on the front of the Style section of the [...]
Brady Dennis on “After the sky fell”
November 2, 2011 – 12:54 pm
This week’s “Why’s this so good?” post looked at Brady Dennis’ 296-word story about a toll booth operator’s love for the wife he lost to cancer. The piece ran in 2005 as part of the St. Petersburg Times’ occasional series “300 words.” Dennis has since moved on to The Washington Post, where he is an [...]
Gene Weingarten on “the god of journalism,” compulsive editing and “The Peekaboo Paradox”
September 28, 2011 – 7:33 pm
After some months spent planning to write about Gene Weingarten’s story “The Peekaboo Paradox” for this site, I caught up with the two-time Pulitzer winner in Texas this summer at the Mayborn Conference. And when I say caught, I mean caught. I had never met Weingarten before, but I saw the highly recognizable, highly mustachioed [...]
“Why’s this so good?” No. 13: Gene Weingarten peels the Great Zucchini
September 27, 2011 – 11:30 am
The Great Zucchini has a secret. And in “The Peekaboo Paradox,” Gene Weingarten exhumes the history that haunts the most popular children’s entertainer in Washington, D.C. The story, which ran in January 2006, is the best thing ever written by the Washington Post’s two-time Pulitzer winner. (Surprisingly enough, Weingarten agrees with this statement.)
“A children’s performer? [...]
Cynthia Gorney on embracing complexity “while maintaining a sense of justified outrage”
August 19, 2011 – 10:31 am
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 Journalism and a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine. Before joining the Berkeley faculty, she worked [...]
June Editors’ Roundtable: The Washington Post finds order in chaos
June 6, 2011 – 3:47 pm
For the first Roundtable of the month, our editors looked at “Ala. tornado twists two families together” by Stephanie McCrummen from The Washington Post. The story, published early in May, covers an unusual connection between strangers after a twister roared through Rainsville, Ala.
We’ve switched things up a little this installment, freeing editors from a pesky [...]
From research to story: more from the BIO 2011 conference
June 2, 2011 – 1:59 pm
A bevy of biographers gathered in May in Washington, D.C., at the second annual Compleat Biographer Conference to discuss how to chase down subjects and make their lives into great stories. Last week we covered Robert Caro’s speech on the importance of setting. Today, we have highlights from the panel on “Turning Research into Narrative.” Speakers [...]
Dorothy Parvaz released from detention in Iran
May 18, 2011 – 8:57 am
We’re thrilled to hear this morning that Iran has freed detained journalist (and 2009 Nieman fellow) Dorothy Parvaz. Alan Cowell and J. David Goodman reported in The New York Times that, without advance notice, Dorothy called her fiancé, Todd Barker, from customs as she arrived back in Doha, Qatar. A wonderful surprise for him, no [...]
