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Narratives (RSS)

Thursday, June 26, 2008 6:07 AM

Just Wait....

Associated Press Texas sports editor Jaime Aron has written an excellent narrative about his premature twin sons' fight for life, "Born Too Soon." There's much to recommend this story – it has just enough details, it moves at a nice pace, Aron shares
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Wednesday, June 25, 2008 6:31 AM

They Watch Every Blip

"The Flight Watchmen" by Laura Blumenfeld of The Washington Post is a fine example of how to tell a larger story be tracking a few people through an ordinary day. The day starts slowly as Chan Browne, 44, makes a sandwich for his girlfriend's daughter's
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Wednesday, June 18, 2008 6:51 AM

The Housing Bubble

"Anatomy of a Meltdown: The Credit Crisis" by Alec Klein and Zachary A. Goldfarb of The Washington Post is a comprehensive, readable account of the housing boom and bust. In the first section of this three-part series, they trace the bubble's roots
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Monday, June 16, 2008 6:45 AM

Undercover in Myanmar

More than a month after Cyclone Nargis killed tens of thousands of people in Myanmar, the military regime continues to deny unhindered access to the disaster zone. To reach the affected regions, a Los Angeles Times staff writer hid in the holds of riverboats
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Friday, June 13, 2008 6:47 AM

Keeping Pace

Yesterday we featured The Des Moines Register's superb multimedia package, "Parkersburg Tornado: The Aftermath." Today we highlight a narrative from the Register's storm coverage, Ken Fuson's "Solidified by Sandbags." Fuson begins as the Cedar River
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Tuesday, June 10, 2008 6:13 AM

John Doe Steps Forward

In 1970, 13-year-old John Hunt was victimized by a serial pedophile, Dr. George Reardon, in Reardon's office at St. Francis Hospital in Hartford, Connecticut. Hunt, now an assistant features editor at The Hartford Courant, tells what happened next in
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Friday, June 06, 2008 6:45 AM

Witness for the Prosecution

Ashley Harrell's "Snitch" in SF Weekly profiles Deanna Johnson, a woman who is determined to testify against a gang murderer even though she risks losing everything she has, including her son and her life. Harrell does an amazing job of describing
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Monday, June 02, 2008 6:25 AM

Countdown to Collapse

In a fast-paced series, Kate Kelly of The Wall Street Journal chronicles "The Fall of Bear Stearns." She provides a wealth of details, as in this passage: The 40 top Bear Stearns Cos. executives listening to Alan Schwartz over lunch had spent the morning
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Tuesday, May 27, 2008 6:43 AM

Weaving a Story on the Web

"A Clearwater Girl Is Burned, Not Broken," by John Barry of the St. Petersburg Times, is a fine example of a Web package that combines pictures, text and audio to tell a moving story. When you open the story, your eyes are drawn to a photo of a scarred,
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Thursday, May 22, 2008 6:59 AM

Vision Quest

In September 2006, Marquette University engineering professor Mark Polczynski challenged a team of five students as they began their senior project: Can you design a biodiesel reactor that's high tech, yet so ingeniously simple that you could imagine
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Wednesday, May 21, 2008 6:20 AM

Two Tales Become One

"In Rubble, Couple Clung to Each Other, and to Life," by Edward Wong in The New York Times, is one of the finest stories to emerge from the Chinese earthquake. In his lede, Wong quickly draws us into the predicament a husband and wife face as they lie
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Wednesday, May 14, 2008 8:31 AM

Medical Bills

When Tom McGrath's daughter Sarah had her appendix removed, the doctors and nurses did everything right. But when McGrath got the bill for her hospital stay, none of it made sense to him. "My Daughter's $29,000 Appendectomy" in Philadelphia Magazine
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Sunday, May 11, 2008 10:55 PM

A Soldier Comes Home

The magnificent and moving "The Things That Carried Him" by Chris Jones in the May issue of Esquire narrates the nine-day journey that Sgt. Joe Montgomery's body took between his death in Iraq and his burial in an Indiana cemetery. Moving backward through
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Wednesday, May 07, 2008 11:22 PM

Paths of Evil

"A Trail of Deception," by Justin Fenton of The Baltimore Sun, is an nicely written 3-chapter series on the multistate criminal career of Cindy McKay. Near the beginning of chapter 1, Fenton introduces McKay: The mother of six, McKay was far closer to
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Wednesday, April 30, 2008 8:00 AM

Nameless No More

Two top writers recently covered the Doe Network, which attempts to match missing persons with unidentified bodies. It's fascinating to compare their two stories. The AP's Helen O'Neill, in "Amateur Sleuths Name Anonymous Dead," focuses on the Doe Network's
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