I’ve never met William Langewiesche, and I don’t know many of his secrets, but I know he and I have at least one thing in common: We’re guided by the same terrible fear.
“You have this precious, incredibly privileged thing,” he told the San Francisco Chronicle in 2007, “which is the reader’s attention for a little [...]
Tag Archives: Time
“Why’s this so good?” No. 3: André Aciman
on the geography of longing
July 12, 2011 – 11:22 am
Any piece about New York City has a heavyweight champion to contend with – E.B. White’s “Here Is New York” – but André Aciman’s “Shadow Cities” comes out swinging. “On a late spring morning almost two years ago,” it begins, “while walking on Broadway, I suddenly noticed that something terrible had happened to Straus Park.”
The [...]
“Why’s this so good?” No. 2: McPhee takes on the Mississippi
July 7, 2011 – 2:11 pm
When the Mississippi River recently surged down through the middle of the country, a lot of people I follow on Twitter took the opportunity to point to John McPhee’s marvelous 1987 article “Atchafalaya.”I took their advice and revisited the piece.
After 24 years, the story is still valuable simply as a guide to the risks faced by [...]
What we’re watching: highlights from this year’s Webby Awards honorees
April 14, 2011 – 9:57 am
For our latest roundup of visual storytelling, we’ve selected some entries from the 15th Annual Webby Awards Official Honoree Selections announced yesterday. The following stories made the first cut but did not cross the bar to become nominees. We thought, however, that among those projects left behind, there were some really engaging pieces we wanted to [...]
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 [...]
February Editors’ Roundtable: Time magazine takes on the Tucson shootings
February 1, 2011 – 10:49 am
The narrative selected for discussion by our first-ever Editors’ Roundtable is “The Real Lesson of the Tucson Tragedy” by David Von Drehle. Appearing in Time magazine five days after the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and so many others, the piece draws on reporting from six reporters who fed Von Drehle material from Tucson, New York and [...]
Vanity Fair’s Bryan Burrough on writing narrative: “people are dying to put down your article”
August 6, 2010 – 12:45 am
In what might be the only performance of Texas stand-up comedy about narrative writing, Vanity Fair writer Bryan Burrough recently offered practical tips for long-form storytelling to a Mayborn Conference audience. Prior to his magazine career, Burrough spent several years reporting for The Wall Street Journal; he has also written five books, including “Public Enemies” [...]
