[UPDATE: Good news! Iran has allowed Dorothy to return to Qatar. For more information, read our post on Dorothy's release.]
At a Nieman Foundation gathering over the weekend in Cambridge, a decade’s worth of current and former fellows joined with foundation staff to celebrate the tenure of departing Nieman curator Bob Giles. While journalists from around [...]
Tag Archives: The Washington Post
2009 Nieman fellow Dorothy Parvaz detained: the scoop so far and what you can do
May 16, 2011 – 1:43 pm
Eli Saslow on writing news narratives, creating empathy and characters’ defining moments
April 29, 2011 – 8:09 am
Our latest Notable Narrative comes from The Washington Post’s Eli Saslow, who wrote about a Wisconsin man’s attempt to understand what the federal budget debate means for his family. In addition to working seven years at the Post and serving as a visiting professor at the University of Montana School of Journalism in 2010, Saslow [...]
Going small: the fragile world of a single constituent
April 28, 2011 – 1:16 pm
Our latest Notable Narrative is a story from The Washington Post about Clarence Cammers, a Wisconsin man who asks a question at a town hall meeting with his congressman.
So many of the narratives we choose focus on high drama: violence, natural disasters, illness or financial ruin. Here, the Post’s Eli Saslow offers a different kind [...]
What we’re watching: a town washed away, satellite images and covering conflict
March 14, 2011 – 1:53 pm
With Muammar Qaddafi’s efforts to suppress armed rebellion in Libya and the events unleashed by the massive earthquake in Japan on Friday, it’s a wonder that those of us not involved in the immediate coverage or relief can do anything but sit and watch these images in horror, hoping for the best possible outcomes in the face [...]
What we’re reading: death in all its guises
March 8, 2011 – 1:21 pm
A week into March, we’re eager for spring, but the narrative stories we’ve unearthed lately consistently offer up darker themes that go against the promise of the season. We’ve rounded up a few that focus specifically on death: murder on campus, suicide at work, death in combat and perhaps most surprising, a delicately crafted obituary [...]
Awards season begins: narrative highlights from ASNE and Polk awards; announcement of CRMA finalists
February 23, 2011 – 11:42 am
Looking for some quality narrative journalism you might not have noticed before? As awards season for newspapers and magazines gets underway, we wanted to share links to stories recognized for their writing and storytelling. Here are some of the more narrative categories and entries from the 2010 Polk Awards in Journalism, the list of finalists [...]
Time’s David Von Drehle on narrating tragedy and the evolution of his Tucson story
February 2, 2011 – 3:41 pm
Yesterday, we posted our first Editors’ Roundtable, in which a group of word wizards did their magic on a piece of narrative nonfiction. Our debut story for consideration was “The Real Lesson of the Tucson Tragedy,” written by Time magazine Editor-at-large David Von Drehle. While the prospect of having a group of editors poke around in [...]
Narrative on deadline: stories on the shooting of Representative Gabrielle Giffords
January 10, 2011 – 11:11 am
Doing narrative stories on the heels of breaking news generally precludes the kind of lyricism often associated with the best examples of the form. Yet it can be a good way to get a framework established on a confusing story – such as the attempted assassination of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords over the weekend.
Building a story [...]
Facebook as narrative: The Washington Post tries it out online and in print
December 10, 2010 – 12:02 pm
This morning’s Washington Post print edition carried a story built out of an annotated Facebook feed. The piece was posted to washingtonpost.com last night with the title “A Facebook story: A mother’s joy and a family’s sorrow.” While I’d seen the Post and other papers structure stories around Twitter and Tumblr feeds, and Slate’s mock [...]
