WriterL
A subscription-only listserve focusing on literary journalism. Co-founded by Jon Franklin, author of Writing for Story, and Lynn Franklin, who also moderates the discussion.

River Teeth
A biannual journal of nonfiction narrative.

Points of Entry
Subtitled "Cross-currents in Storytelling," this journal advocates narrative in journalism and journalism education.

Nieman on Narrative
Special issue of Nieman Reports.

Narrative Conference
Read about the 2001 Nieman Narrative Journalism Conference in Boston. See reviews of numerous speakers, including Rick Bragg, Tom French, and Isabel Wilkerson.

September 2002 Archives

The Trials of a Citizen Soldier
Last fall, when anthrax was discovered in the mail, Leroy Richmond, a postal worker at the Brentwood mail center in Washington, D.C., kept going to work, heeding the call of officials who told the workers they were the quiet soldiers in this war against terrorism. But then Richmond, with anthrax crawling through his blood, nearly died. Two of his friends did. While other survivors point fingers and can't contain their bitterness, Richmond is slow to criticize the postal service for not closing the plant earlier. He was just doing his duty. Still, the illness lingers, he tires quickly, his memory is less secure, and he will probably never return to work. Gary Dorsey of The Baltimore Sun tells of Richmond's illness and his recovery in this two-part package.


Out of Nowhere: Inside the Pentagon on 9/11
Victims of the terrorist attack at the Pentagon haven't gotten the same attention as those at Ground Zero. In this four-part series, Earl Swift of the Virginian-Pilot constructs a thorough tick-tock look at that fateful morning at the Pentagon. He manages to successfully weave together various stories, though at times it can be hard to keep all the characters straight. Ultimately, the reader sees an interesting cross-section of civilian and military heroes, of those who got out physically unscathed and those still struggling to recover.


The Story of Edith
Bill Reiter of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette spent months researching the story of Edith Ware, who was 14 when the last lynch mob in Little Rock stormed her neighborhood in 1927. In the eight-part series, he writes short takes (600 or so words) that document Edith's life, her determination, and the changes in Little Rock over the last century. This sidebar explains a little about how Reiter found the story and the lengths he went to verify whatever he could of a decades-old tale. Click on the PDFs to see the paintings by John Deering that illustrate the story. (Scroll to the bottom of the web page to get the first installment).


The Truth About Bob
Bob Ferguson was briefly famous in the 1970s when the Iowa man wrote a letter asking the governor for a life sentence because prison was his only home. Three decades later, Ken Fuson of the Des Moines Register writes about the two families that try to help this now homeless con-man. The web version includes a wealth of other information: letters Bob sent, audio of Bob answering questions, and an interesting essay by Fuson about how he came to write the story. (It all started as a feel-good Christmas-week feature.)


A Father's Pain, a Judge's Duty, and a Justice Beyond Their Reach
It's the story of a father who made a tragic mistake and the judge who had to uphold his sense of the law. After Paul Wayment left his 3-year-old boy sleeping in the truck while he tracked deer in the Utah mountains, nothing was ever the same. Barry Siegel of the Los Angeles Times won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for feature writing for this piece. He artfully pulls the reader through this 7,600-word tale, giving us a peek inside the minds of the troubled father and the grieving judge.


Measure by Measure
Mary Miller of The News & Observer follows a high school band from the sweaty, sunburnt days of band camp to the biggest performance of their young lives that winter. In addition to the band director, Miller focuses the six-part series on a few band members, letting us follow their challenges for first chair and their butterflies before the big concert. The stories ran in "real-time" throughout the fall of 2001, one every couple of weeks.


Lost in the Music
David Stable of The Oregonian tells the tale of Sam Johnson, a teenage cello star who at 16 is struggling against rules at home and school. An African-American who is one of nine children adopted by a fundamentalist Christian family in rural Oregon, Sam can talk "about becoming the Tiger Woods of classical music without straining credulity." But the occasional private lesson with Itzhak Perlman doesn't shield him from more pedestrian teenage troubles that may derail his music career and threaten his relationship with his parents.


Life-saving Squeegee
In the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks, Jim Dwyer of the New York Times tells the story of a window washer and how his squeegee saved the life of six men. For more on the story, see this review from Poynter's Roy Peter Clark


An Unbreakable Spirit
This five-part series in the Asheville Citizen-Times features a crippled 9-year-old from Honduras and a humble landscaper from North Carolina who had never traveled outside the country. In her first stab at a major narrative project, Susan Reinhardt tells the tale of this unlikely couple -- the landscaper promises to help and the boy keeps dreaming of walking. Published in 2001.
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Staging a Comeback
Other writers have chronicled high school plays -- the auditions, the preparations, the big opening night. But Deb Kollars's four-part series in the Sacramento Bee has an added twist: Luther Burbank High School hadn't put on a play or musical for more than 10 years. Others rented out the spacious auditorium and once kids from another neighborhood filled in with water from the fire hoses. Then the new principal, a former football coach, decided arts would be part of the answer to Burbank's academic woes.


Scott Speicher: Dead or Alive?
On the first night of the Gulf War, Scott Speicher, an American pilot disappeared. He was presumed dead, but ten years later the government decided to list him as missing in action. All of it leaves you asking: what if? This six-part series by Lon Wagner and Amy Waters Yarsinske was published by the Viriginian Pilot in January 2002.


Choosing Naia: A Family's Journey
This project, by Boston Globe reporter Mitchell Zuckoff and photographer Suzanne Kreiter, began in August 1998, shortly after Greg Fairchild and Tierney Temple-Fairchild learned through prenatal testing that their unborn child had Down syndrome and a severe heart defect. The story follows the couple through their decision to have the baby, the birth and Naia's first months. Zuckoff won a ASNE distinguished writing award for his work. He later turned the series into a book.


Seeking the Good Death
Philadelphia Inquirer reporter Michael Vitez and photographers April Saul and Ron Cortes won a Pulitzer in 1997 for this five-part series on choices that confronted critically-ill patients who sought to die with dignity. Especially outstanding is Part 3, the story of 64-year-old Bob Hicks as he cares for both of his ailing parents.


Angels and Demons
Thomas French of the St. Petersburg Times won the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for feature writing for this seven-part series. Nearly a decade after the bodies of a mother and her two daugthers were found floating in Tampa Bay, French tells the story of the murder, the husband left behind, and the detectives searching for the killer.


Black Hawk Down
Mark Bowden's detailed account of the Somalia fiasco. How many other newspaper series do you know that were made into Hollywood blockbusters?


3 Little Words
Roy Peter Clark's "breakfast serial" chronicles a family struggling with AIDS. Published in the St. Petersburg Times in 1996, it was broken up into 29 chapters, each less than 1,000 words.