Archive
Writing once featured on the original Gangrey blog.
This may be the strangest crime story I've ever read. It's told in a straight chronology, for the most part, with few visible narrative devices or stylistic flourishes, and I was s…
Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They s…
Michael Kruse: Turn on your television on Christmas Eve at 8 and flip to Bay News 9. What you'll see is four hours of a burning log set to Christmas carols. This log is the local v…
Libby Copeland: We are more naked, as a nation, than we've ever been. We are forever baring our souls, revealing the mundane and the sacred. We are naked in our curiosity about the…
Buzz Bissinger: His hair is longer than it was in his former life, the life he left behind like a snake shedding its skin. A yellow bandanna wraps around his forehead, and reflecti…
Lane DeGregory: TAMPA They expect the letters to Santa. So far this season, about 1,000 pleas to St. Nick have arrived in the Suncoast District of the U.S. Postal Service, which se…
Alex Zayas: TAMPA — Vickie Bruce saw so many police officers when she pulled up to her West Shore Boulevard garden shop that February morning, she thought someone must have been mu…
Dan Barry: CARLISLE, La. A daughter of Plaquemines Parish, her camouflage outfit the color of the forest, checks the oil. She checks the steering, the coolant, the gas. She makes s…
Don't forget. Outshine your punk friends with the coolest j-clothes going. And proceeds go to a good cause: The Mike Levine Journalism Workshop.
Don't miss this, either. From our friend Reid Forgrave: Early one summer morning in 2006, Eric Jacobs awoke with a start. In bed beside him lay his wife, Heather, three months preg…
Don't miss this. First of three parts ran Sunday. From our friend Mark Johnson and Kathleen Gallagher: On a Saturday morning in June, when his children are at piano lessons and the…
Justin George: Kevin Rouse stood before the judge wearing a patchy beard and a rumpled orange jumpsuit. He was accused of following a young boy into a church bathroom, stuffing pap…
Tommy: They met on eHarmony. They had long romantic talks on Skype. He proposed on Facebook. They have dated a year but they have been together face-to-face for less than two weeks…
Tim Botos: CANTON — With steely eyes and a scraggly beard visible through layers of shirts, jackets, coats and hats, the man emerged from a soup kitchen. He cast a long shadow bene…
Jones: "I just want to talk to you about your role in that journey — what you did that day, how it affected you. I'll ask you some strange questions because I want to get it right.…
Mike Levine workshop alum Pete Iorizzo: When he didn't tweet about Cliff Lee, she knew something was wrong. During the weekend Steven Smith had posted dozens of Twitter messages, a…
Larry King wraps up tonight after 25 years and some 7,000 shows. Here's the best profile of him I've ever read, circa '91, by David Finkel: "THIS IS A TRUE STORY." Larry King says…
Good stuff here. Simple, effective tips from Planet Money's Chana Jaffe-Wolt that can apply across platforms. (thanks, Kelley)
Joe Mozingo (thanks, Mark): He spent much of his life consumed by what the three men on the screen before him had done. He stared at the glossy, bloodshot eyes of the man in the mi…
Ride to court with the victim. Here's Alex Zayas and Colleen Jenkins: TAMPA — The little girl peered out the window of the car on the Lee Roy Selmon Crosstown Expressway. She was o…
We were talking here the other day about how much we enjoy well-done ruminations on ordinary items after Kruse dropped this ditty about Yankee Candles in the Metro section. I tried…
The following is one of the most beautiful stories I've ever read, fiction or non-. The lede itself, the way we are introduced to the story's main character, is certainly one of th…
Jones: The day begins for Randy and Evi Quaid inside Hearing Room 1 at the Immigration and Refugee Board. The room is windowless. There is a small clock on one wall. It's a few min…
Monica Hesse (thanks, Mark): "Sometimes I fear that I dress really strangely," Laura Hillenbrand says. "Or maybe I don't speak normally, because language changes while I'm away." S…
Rob Farley: MIAMI Reina McWilliams woke one recent Wednesday as usual to the sounds of the "Greatest Hits of the '60s and '70s" on Magic 102.7 FM. In between songs, an announcer re…
David Wharton (thanks, Raja): There might be blood. At the very least, there will be violence — George Parros can picture it in his mind. The veteran hockey player goes looking for…
I'm thankful for y'all, for the energy and thought you put into helping others get better here at gangrey. If I could hug you, I would. I feel lucky to be a part of a community of…
Ashley Halsey III and Lonnae O'Neal Parker: Dillingham, Alaska — The mountain snapped the five-foot aluminum strut like a hard-bent twig. The metal sliced through the plane's thin…
Josh Hamilton today was named the American League's Most Valuable Player. A fine reason to re-read Dave Sheinin's story from February 2007: The Devil and the Son of God are waging…
Dan Barry: Behind an unmarked door, in a cluttered break room of half-eaten lunches and morale-boosting posters, a dozen Transportation Security Administration officers listened to…
Part One. Amy Ellis Nutt (thanks, Mark): Riotous waves pummel Jose Arias. In the frantic scramble to abandon ship, he zipped his survival suit only to his throat and now the freezi…
Kruse, again: MIAMI — Downstairs was a rented Ford Escape with a used hotel key card on the console. Up in his 23rd-floor apartment were a few pieces of furniture and an unhung sho…
Kruse: Berkeley Prep's Robert Klein, fast, tough and committed, took the handoff and raced toward the end zone. Crack! He spun off the first tackle and darted to the left and accel…
Dan Barry: IN the dozen years I spent working in the newsroom of the historic New York Times building, just off Times Square, I must have contemplated my future a hundred times, a…
We've had this story on here before, but I've been thinking about it a lot lately. Not sure why, exactly, except it has one of my favorite endings of all time. My wife and I both c…
Journalism conferences seem to get rarer and rarer these days, but the Poynter Institute is having a pretty intriguing one December 9-11 at the campus in St. Petersburg. Roy Peter…
On a commercial break, cameras still rolling … Lady: "Oh, the Washington Post hated it. Did you see his review, haw haw haw haw." Other lady: "Yes. It was very good." Watch it here…
The company pledges to remove the caffeine, guarana and taurine, but says nothing about the Smurf piss, wolf saliva and moon dust. Steph Hayes: Come to think of it, people were buy…
Michael Hall (h/t longform.org): On august 20, 1977, NASA launched the Voyager 2 spaceship on a one-way ticket to oblivion. Three weeks later, its sister craft, Voyager 1, blasted…
Lane DeGregory: In the pre-operating room on the third floor of Tampa General, the two nurses lay in hospital beds, side-by-side. Their husbands had pushed them close enough for th…
Alleged Gangrey lurker Brian Mockenhaupt: Staff Sergeant Christopher Gerhart's stomach rolled, queasy. He stood alone under a trellis heavy with fat bunches of white grapes, plante…
Brick: Somewhat less than a beach by the white sand standards of Acapulco, Coney Island has always been, or at least meant, something more, too. Like the sylvan refuge of the Clois…
Stuever: On election night, Sarah Palin served as Fox News Channel's personification of hope - its poetic muse and telegenic Wonder Woman (in no-costume Diana Prince mode), wearing…
Tom Junod: I am watching Mike Huckabee on Fox. He is declaring that two years after being pronounced dead, the Republicans are back — and he's comparing their resurgence to Twi…
Got an email the other day from a recent college grad who is working as editor for a cool blog. He's reading lots of bits and pieces of stuff every day, but he's wondering about re…
William Wan: ZHOUTIE, CHINA -- You smell the lake before you see it, an overwhelming stench like rotten eggs mixed with manure. The visuals are just as bad, the shore caked wit…
Dan Barry: HENDERSON, Nev. — The knock on the front door elicited the annoyed yapping of an unseen dog, followed by the appearance of a gray-haired man busily eating chips from a b…
Happy Halloween. Here's a treat. By Henry Allen, Washington Post Staff Writer July 10, 1995 You rent a house at the beach. One night, just back from the ice cream place, you say t…
The only thing that would have made this any better is Four Loko. Oh, wait. Here's Chris Jones: An ancient oak tree stood behind the main house, and the dozen of us ducked under it…
Stuever: In search of the surest way to reach and encourage his core constituency during the midterm elections, President Obama visited "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart" Wednesday…
Barry Hannah was opposed to rules for writing until a persistent and gin-breathed woman badgered him enough. Here are the six handwritten rules he gave her. (Many thanks to S.I. fo…
What you won't read in the November Esquire is that my friend Luke spent six years reporting this story. He began when we were both working together at Atlanta magazine, when it wa…
Love this idea from Mark Armstrong at Longreads.com: …When I click a headline at NYTimes.com, I can never tell whether I'm going to get a 200-word blog post or a 10,000-word epic.…
Happy birthday to Pat Conroy, born Oct. 26, 1945, in Atlanta. From Beach Music, page 281: In that summer, I would remember my friends and their souls, light and air-streamed as mal…
Far out on the desert to the north dustspouts rose wobbling and augered the earth and some said they'd heard of pilgrims borne aloft like dervishes in those mindless coils to be dr…
An interesting issue came up at Auburn Chautauqua this weekend that calls for the help of Gangrey nation. If your friend is one of the best magazine writers in America and he doesn…
Lane DeGregory: Outside the prison library, the women were waiting for their teacher, holding a copy of their newspaper, trying to decide what to do. They had named the paper Time…
Nadya Labi (thanks, Dave): "Check Your E-mail" The three innocuous words seemed to offer Mark Drybrough the relief he sought. At 32, Mark was beyond tired. Life had long ceased to…
Back fresh from Auburn Chautauqua 2010. You should've been there. Man crushes are okay, right? Here's Dan Zak: NEW YORK — He sneaks a cigarette in the stairwell, through an emergen…
In a break from tradition, I'm just posting the tease. A man jumps off the Mass. Ave. bridge into a cold, choppy Charles River. In an instant, his best friend dives in after him. T…
David Halberstam (h/t longform.org): The desolate neighborhood on the West Side of Chicago where the Bulls play their home games is very quiet these days. Their gleaming new arena,…
Have anything that fits this? Email Pat Walters at pkwalters@gmail.com We're doing a live show about symmetry and mirrors, as you can probably imagine, we've got plenty of mathy an…
Wow. Dan Barry: THE fish men see her still, their Annie, in the hide-and-seek shadows of South Street. She's telling her dirty jokes and doing anything for a buck: hustling newspap…
Loved reading this inside my KC Star yesterday. Lee Hill Kavanaugh: The teachers at Grandview's Conn-West Elementary School were told the night before: big assembly tomorrow. The r…
Michael Kruse: The 1993 DUI arrest of Jim Greer started as a 911 call from a woman in a drunken panic. A police officer responded to a Shell station in Palm Bay shortly before 4:30…
Sorry for the blog trouble this morning. Go check out Nancy Nall's post on Colombus Dispatch columnist Mike Harden over on nancynall.com (which you should look at often): I alw…
I love it when a writer makes you keep reading. Erin Sullivan: NEW PORT RICHEY — She figured the porch light burned out. It was about 1 a.m. Wednesday and Vickie Bankowski was just…
Mike Mooney: That terrible morning, Antonio Balta dropped off his girlfriend, Michelle Bashford, at the Gulfstream Park Racetrack in Hallandale Beach, where she worked as a waitres…
Joe Mozingo (thanks, Mark): Port-au-Prince, Haiti — He was running through what felt like a dream. He had to get home. His father, Sony, would know what was happening. He'd keep ev…
Erin Sullivan: HOLIDAY — He said he took the Greyhound from New York to be with her again. The small man with shaggy dark hair showed up at the beginning of the week. Sarah Ann…
Robert Samuels: A crowd of hundreds filters into a neighbor's backyard expecting to see something brutal: bloodied noses and punched-out teeth, blackened eyes and broken jaws, as s…
Stephanie McCrummen: It is a bright afternoon early in the month, a moment of anxiety at a sun-faded apartment complex in north Phoenix. Down a dusty breezeway, workers are paintin…
Tyler Dunne: LUMBERTON - His eyes well up. His face turns fire red. His wife, on a sofa nearby, occasionally peeks over. By now, Mike Brill is pretty much bulletproof to tragedy…
Jeff Klinkenberg: SALT SPRINGS Tom Hallock slips into the vegetation past the cabbage palms and the live oaks and the bay magnolia. A pileated woodpecker hammers a distant pine…
Lane DeGregory: Before he climbs into the press box, before he opens his Louisville Slugger briefcase and pulls out his score book, the Rays' official scorer for Major League Baseb…
Wright Thompson: COPIAPO, Chile -- On the eve of the biggest soccer game in the history of this remote desert town, the team knelt in prayer. The Regional Atacama players were one…
St. Pete Times music and arts critics Sean Daly and John Fleming talk baseball: ... The pitching motion is the American form of dance for men. Such are the random thoughts that…
Stephanie Hayes: The SunChips bag, rest its soul, was a total narc. It showed your cards, alerting roomies and spouses of your raging chip habit. See, the snack came in a 100 pe…
Want to drop a comment on GoErie.com? Pay up. The Erie Times-News is testing a plan to start charging $2.99 to comment on stories as an Insider: "We are developing this as a pai…
The bread man carried old bread out and brought new bread in. He squatted down and arranged it on the rack. Norwood noticed that he was poking finger holes in the competitors' loav…
I'm a fan of Fred Dicker, who went a round in New York with Tea Party candidate Carl Paladino: This is like Politifact in real time. Makes me miss New York. It even sounds old-time…
I'm hearing there are quite a few FOGs in this year's Best American Sports Writing. Wright and TLake and noteworthy nods to Kruse, Chris Jones, Seth Wickersham, Todd Frankel and…
Wow. Check this one out. Andy Meacham: ST. PETERSBURG — About 11 p.m. Sept. 12, a car struck Neil Alan Smith and threw him off his bicycle on Fourth Street N. The car didn't stop.…
Dan Barry: MADISON, Wis. Would it be all right if the Leader of the Free World stopped by your campus for a little while? He wants to surround himself with hordes of enthusiastic y…
Lane DeGregory: ST. PETERSBURG — Four hours before Monday's first pitch, as the ballplayers were filing into Tropicana Field and bartenders were tapping kegs for the fans and blogg…
Chris Jones: Javier Bardem is listening to a doctor explain proprioception, the cosmic process that allows us to know, among other things, the location of our feet in space. He is…
Lane DeGregory: The call comes about 5:15 p.m. every day. In the tidy cubicle in her Tampa office, Julie Hopson stops typing. She looks up at her co-workers filing past her desk on…
Meg Laughlin: TAMPA Most of the time, Magdala Joseph stays in the bedroom of her South Tampa apartment with the blinds closed, listening to music and reading books in French about…
Go read Wright right now: MIAMI BEACH, Fla. — I went to see Muhammad Ali on Thursday night, and hours later I'm still struggling with the profound sadness of the evening. I'm not s…
William Bradford Huie: YOU never heard of Roosevelt Wilson. I never saw him more than twice. But Roosevelt Wilson continues to disturb me. Whenever I try to feel that I am an hones…
There's a spat among Brits over the use of present tense in modern novels. From Laura Miller in Salon: What reasons do writers give for opting for the present tense? According to H…
Herbert Bayard Swope, in the preface to Treasury of Great Reporting: Literature Under Pressure, which just arrived in my mailbox: "This work follows the greatest rule of writing (a…
Oh, heavens. Introducing, J-Barbie. Barbie® I Can Be…™ dolls and accessories empower girls to play out different roles and "try on" fabulous careers, including news anchor, the…
Pamela Colloff: A FEW HOURS BEFORE DAWN ON A sticky summer night in Somerville, a one-stoplight town ninety miles northwest of Houston, police chief Jewel Fisher noticed the faint…
If you haven't yet, go check out the Washington Post Style Tumblr.
I love these. Thanks to Jim Sheeler for passing them along. THE BOYS ON THE BALCONIES : 40 YARDS OF SILENCE APART Rocky Mountain News (CO) – Sunday, May 22, 1994 Author: GREG LOPEZ…
Joan Garrett: A nagging smell wakes Aquarnetta Porter from shallow sleep. She inhales, imagining filth somewhere outside her apartment's walls. The scent must have crept under the…
I was talking to a college class the other day and mentioned Tom French (from whom I've stolen nearly all of my tips) and a woman, a little older than the rest, stopped me. "Did he…
In September 2005, I was working night cops at the Tampa Tribune when a buddy, back from vacation, dropped the Jacksonville paper on my desk. Read this, he said. The biscuits shine…
For your afternoon reading pleasure, a Missed Connections ad from Craigslist: Hi! I am almost 100% positive you remember me. I was standing in the cab line for about 15 minutes in…
Read this, soon. Chris Goffard: At first, it hurt too much to look at his girls. Isabelle had just turned 3, and Emma was 1. He thought of them growing into teenagers and then wome…
Dan Zak: July 4, 2008. It was one of those shared artist lofts you normally see in movies about distressed bohemians — cavernous, paint-speckled, smelling damply of pot — except th…
This story, "Pfc. Gibson Comes Home," known also as just "Little Duck," ran in the Courier-Journal & Times Sunday Magazine in Louisville, Ky., on July 28, 1968. It won the Pulitzer…
Kruse: Late last month, on the first day of school, nearly 400 children walked through the main door at MacFarlane Park Elementary, over the mat that welcomed them in English, Fren…
From John Capouya, author of "Gorgeous George: The Outrageous Bad-Boy Wrestler Who Created American Pop Culture," comes this: Ronny Elliott had an unusual Mom. Not many Southern wh…
Ben Montgomery: The killer had choices. He could have stayed in Clearwater, washing dishes at Hooters for $7.50 an hour, sitting through classes at St. Petersburg College, tryin…
Todd C. Frankel: SAUGET � Charlie Lisk walked out onto the field, pushing aside the long years and longer odds, content to chase his dream through another humid day. Sweat stain…
John Barry and John Pendygraft: GAINESVILLE — Pastor Terry Jones stayed holed up in his Dove World Outreach Center most of Tuesday. His center is a large prefab warehouse on a tree…
I'm preparing for a talk today and I thought of this story, which I love. It's worth re-reading every month or so. Brady Dennis: The few drivers on this dark, lonely stretch of the…
Dan Zak: It gleams like a giant silver bullet lodged in the former site of a used-car lot, between a dumpy little liquor store and a rubbly, vacant property. It's a diner, that Ame…
John McPhee (thanks, Richard): I always say to my classes that it's analogous to cooking a dinner. You go to the store and you buy a lot of things. You bring them home and you put…
From that Time story on Franzen and his latest: Franzen is very conscious that people are freer than ever — that word again — to spend their time and attention being entertained by…
Ben and Edmund spoke at a company forum yesterday about the work that won a Casey Medal and a Dart Award and was a Pulitzer finalist.
Anthony Shadid (thanks, Raja): BAGHDAD — In a pastel-colored room at the Baghdad morgue known simply as the Missing, where faces of the thousands of unidentified dead of this war a…
Size does matter: When bathed in his own afterglow, Glenn Beck becomes as soft and gentle as Mister Rogers. In cadence and content, his Washington rally debriefing Monday on Fo…
Michael Graff (thanks, Elizabeth): Before he started working in genetic sequencing, Randy Crowell dropped out of high school. He went down to the mill in Kannapolis, 16 years ol…
Sorry for the gangrissues yesterday. Back now and rolling. Here's Thomas Curwen (thanks, Mark): If Elizabeth Uyehara were alive, she would be pleased. Everything was working out as…
Let's post the best of the best. This one is worth reading again. Dan Barry: NEW ORLEANS, Sept. 7 – In the downtown business district here, on a dry stretch of Union Street, past t…
Blake Hall (thanks, Hank): I met Roy in early 2007. I was the leader of a reconnaissance platoon of scouts and snipers in Iraq and was just back from a two-week leave in the United…
TLake in SI: The New York Yankees' top prekindergarten prospect lives in Jersey City and plays baseball with his three brothers in the dusty courtyard behind their apartment. They…
That picture! I haven't had a Schlitz tall boy since the 6th grade. Here's Dan Zak: The march of Western civilization and the prosperity of the United States have partly hinged on…
(h/t HS) Is the way Tao Lin writes a harbinger of a new no-style (concrete/literal) favored by the all-web generation? Tao Lin profile from The Observer: The Observer was sitting a…
Taught by SPT Enterprise Editor Kelley Benham. Here, with her permission, is the About This Course: In this class, you'll tell stories. A story is not an article. You'll learn the…
The conversation here in the enterprise pod this morning was centered on the St. Pete Times' new branding slogan: One Bay. One Buy. Which makes complete sense in this two-paper reg…
In 1994, Tom Junod wrote a story for GQ called "The Abortionist." The piece won him the National Magazine Award for Feature Writing in 1995, and would eventually be cited as one of…
In the last seven years, Atlanta magazine has employed six different writers who did at least one of the following things: 1. Became a finalist for the City and Regional Magazine A…
Liam Dillon from voiceofsandiego.org writes in with a good question: I'm the City Hall reporter here and am working on a profile of the mayor's chief of staff, a woman who's rarely…
In his new book: The best stories are formed around a question that the story answers for the reader: Who did it? Guilty or not guilty? Will she win the money? Will he get the girl…
Hank over on storyboard: There just seems to be this – not overwriting – it's almost like someone is telling you a great story on the way to church, and then we get to church and t…
Thanks to GQ for posting one of the best profiles I've ever read. Here's (circa '00, I think) Elizabeth Gilbert: I say, "Just speak your mind, Hank-3. Don't let me stop you." Me an…
Here's your chance to contribute to NPR's (awesome) radiolab. Help a brother out. Our man Pat Walters (pkwalters@gmail.com) with the pitch: Here's how we're coming at it: Darwin ta…
Esmeralda Bermudez (thanks, Raja): Johnny Smith of Hollywood stands before the platform like a man before an altar. He steps up, he deposits his dime, then he holds his breath as t…
Lane DeGregory: LUTZ — After packing her new pillows and comforter, after boxing the ramen noodles and brownie mix, Allison Briggs stood in the doorway of her cluttered bedroom. Sh…
Interesting subject matter, unlimited access and very smart characters exploring a timely topic. But does the "narrative" drag this down? Matt Richtel: GLEN CANYON NATIONAL RECREAT…
Helena Oliviero (thanks, Joan): Every photograph tells a story. Some, like these, tell two. They are pictures of Jim and Trisha Duguay's wedding day. A day 18 months in the plannin…
Tom Junod: The pelicans are damned. They are damned in that they are doomed — doomed, many of them, to wear viscous brown cowls of oil until they die. They are damned as individual…
Justin Heckert: The dreamer found a home in the hallways. He was first, before the desks were assembled and the office key fit the lock, before the coaches lined family portraits o…
Alex Zayas and Lane DeGregory in Tampa: When their shift ended on Easter morning, the day was still dark. After a couple of years working overnights, after catching countless dr…
Not that David Finkel isn't funny. It's the material. Check him out on the Colbert Report last night. (And check how serious Colbert is by the end. For a rare few seconds, he drops…
It's been a long while since we've taken the temperature of the future of newspapers. Let's do it again. And let's include magazines this time. Who out there is kicking ass…
Milt Sosin died ten years ago this month. Never heard of him? ...In his more than 50 years as reporter, Sosin covered a lot of stories. Big stories. "I know he wasn't at Pea…
Dan Barry: MONTGOMERY, Ala. You can never come back, ever. If you plead guilty to that long-ago murder in Oklahoma City, you will be released from prison, where you have spent…
Rick Bragg: Everybody feels something when they look at it, unless they are hollow. Standing in that sand, looking into that blue-green, liquid forever, I felt relieved. It was for…
You have to admire David Grann's confidence. He just writes the story and trusts you to keep reading, even though you have no idea where it's going. How do we feel about this? I kn…
Monica Hesse (thanks, Raja): In the grand Mansfield Room of the U.S. Capitol, at a reception held by the National Association of Business Political Action Committees, Jake McGuire…
Just wanted to make quick mention of Gene Weingarten's collection, The Fiddler in the Subway, which I just finished. Anybody else read this? I hadn't seen most of what's in ther…
John Barry: TAMPA — Railroad man Joe Guggino isn't always the best guy to watch baseball with. He hates beer. He doesn't bet. He can't hear so good. He tells a very bad joke about…
This is how you do it. Jamie Thompson: She tried to fill their minds with beautiful memories, of princess parties and water slide rides, pancakes at IHOP on Sunday mornings. Sh…
Robert Samuels with a good one on deadline: Even 40 years after graduation, Miami Carol City High's class of 1970 bursts with a stubborn pride. Pride for having a basketball tea…
Good eye, Mark. Read this. Chris Goffard: The searchers carved skid row into quadrants and advanced in small groups, aiming flashlights into the cold. They moved between nylon t…
StoryBoard is rehashing the Mayborn Conference this week. Stuff from Tom Huang and Mary Karr up so far. More to come from Gary Smith, Mark Bowden and others. Check it.
Hank: Sometimes a critic can be wrong without even typing a word. Take "Jersey Shore," for example. When this guido/guidette group-house reality show debuted on MTV last December,…
Via Kevin Kelly: These here are the best magazine stories ever.
Check the name in the upper right-hand corner. That's right. Now read his story, Thumbing His Way Back Home: Before we talk about sacrifice, or phantom blackbirds, or the Chipper J…
Looking forward to seeing how this experiment goes. From the Washington Post's Story Lab: There's a truism in journalism that says stories are everywhere, that every person contain…
Step aside, Woodward and Bernstein. Here come Montgomery and Kruse. This is the first byline I can remember seeing them share at the St. Petersburg Times. (I know they had at least…
Stephanie Hayes: PALM HARBOR — Mikey Enfield called his grandpa on a blazing hot Monday. Could he help with the yard sale? He loved spending days with his grandparents. And grandpa…
Gary Smith: ENTER A MAN. EVEN AT 60,in pajamas, his body's hard and ready, a fist. He lies down on his bed, and soon he's in it again, the dream in which the football's in his righ…
Tons of FOGs on this list of AASFE award winners.. Kruse, Colleen Kenney, Allyson Bird, Cindy Lange-Kubick, Mark Johnson, Todd Frankel, Lee Hill Kavanaugh, John Barry, Lane DeGrego…
Dan Barry: BAYOU GRAND CAILLOU, La. In Gulf of Mexico waters deemed safe, at least for now, the two metal claws of a weather-beaten flatboat rake the muck below for those prehistor…
Lane DeGregory: PINELLAS PARK Sarah Ludemann couldn't stop crying. All through lunch that Tuesday, while the other seniors at Pinellas Park High chattered in the cafeteria, Sarah s…
Luke Dittrich: He was alone when he discovered she was gone. His son and the other children, along with the other husbands and the other wives, were down the hall, in the large bri…
Wright's in Scotland: My assignment today was to buy $12 worth of newspapers, sit in a pub at 10 in the morning and spend some time reading Tiger "putter" jokes and looking at soft…
Check out Tom French on NPR. As always, you can get Zoo Story: Life In The Garden of Captives and lots of other cool shit at The Shoppes at Gangrey.
Chris Jones: Terry Kniess has prepared. Over the back of the living-room couch, he's draped the yellow T-shirts he and his wife, Linda, wore that fateful morning on The Price Is Ri…
This story about the Barefoot Bandit needs the heavy treatment. Ready? Go.
Monica Hesse (thanks, Mara): The buses are upon us. The height of summer is the height of bus season; they come in droves, beasts of chrome and reclining plush seats, swarming the…
I stumbled onto this series from Anne Hull, which I've never read before today. It was a Pulitzer finalist for features in '95. On a June morning in 1993, Kendrick Crossman Hardcas…
Tune in tomorrow to join the discussion of Barry Hannah's High Lonesome. If you haven't finished, hurry.
Jeff Klinkenberg: APALACHICOLA The night started badly for Frederic Kahler. His restless feet, tapping like Fred Astaire in that big showpiece number with Ginger Rogers in Top H…
Read to the end. Thanks, Nigel. Adam H. Beasley: Dick Evans, an award-winning bowling reporter and the youngest of three brothers whose worked filled The Miami Herald's pages for s…
Does anyone else take forever to start writing because your mind won't stop jumping around to any number of the thousand other things you're worried about besides writing? Have…
Dan Barry: BON SECOUR, Ala. — In a small white building along the baptizing Bon Secour River, a building that once housed a shrimp-net business, the congregation of the Fishermen B…
Some smart sons of guns there at the Washington Post are republishing old (mostly '80s) stuff from Henry Allen, thank god. Here are a few. Beware: Reading them all at once is like…
Sorry for so few posts the last few days. Got a lot of good stuff queued. Let's start with this one, from Wright (and check out the television version on Outside The Lines, Sunday…
S.I. Rosenbaum: (June 27) — On a sweltering January afternoon in 2008, Kelly Keagy — aging rock star, drummer for Night Ranger, the guy who belts MOTORINNN' on that one power anthe…
Michael Hastings: "How'd I get screwed into going to this dinner?" demands Gen. Stanley McChrystal. It's a Thursday night in mid-April, and the commander of all U.S. and NATO force…
Robert Kirby (thanks, Matt): Shortly before midnight on Jan. 25, 1996, five men gathered at a table in a darkened room at the Utah State Prison and prepared to kill a sixth. They w…
Dan Zak: LEEVILLE, LA. — Their eyes are bloodshot. Their scraggy skin glows reddish-brown. They clutch cans of beer. On the wooden deck of Griffin's Marina and Ice, they recoil whe…
Roy Wenzl: KANSAS CITY, Kan. — It was my Uncle Jim who told us my Dad was going to die. He stopped my brother and me in the hallway as we arrived outside Dad's hospital room, and l…
Dan Barry: WASHINGTON — On the 58th day, an outraged nation summoned the man it holds responsible for one of the worst environmental disasters in American history. He walked throug…
Henry Allen: We were putting up the tents when Pakistani police pulled up and told us we might get killed if we camped there. Four guys in a British lump of a car, they'd driven ou…
Something not covered in this interview is that S is his favorite edition of the encyclopedia, for obvious reasons. Nieman Storyboard with Tom: We spoke by phone this week with Atl…
Weingarten in New York mag, circa 1972 (thanks, HS): At 4 p.m. one Saturday last month, a tall, thin, eighteen-year-old youth called Judd was standing on Daly Avenue in the South B…
Jeff Klinkenberg: CAPE SAN BLAS My favorite beach in the world is oil-free for the moment. I worry about all our beaches but especially the one at St. Joseph Peninsula State Park n…
I love this story because it uses serious reporting techniques to illuminate a subject that's pure fun. Ben Montgomery and Alexa Volland: ST. PETERSBURG — Brett Maddox graduated fr…
Tony Rehagen: The words were coming back to Don Belton. He had never been at a loss for lively conversation, debate, or reflection for the pages of his journal. But for years the p…
Richard Lake: Soon, the wind will blow, and it will not cool you off. It will make your skin hurt. Walking outside will make your face feel like it did on Thanksgiving when you ope…
Go, now, and order Tom French's latest book, Zoo Story: Life in the Garden of Captives. You can order that (and much, much more!) from The Shoppes at Gangrey, where all the cool ki…
Chivers (thanks, Mara): MARJA, Afghanistan — The Marine had been shot in the skull. He was up ahead, at the edge of a field, where the rest of his patrol was fighting. A Black Hawk…
The New Yorker just made a new list of hot young writers. What do they have in common? "What was notable in all the writing, above and beyond a mastery of language and of storytell…
Somebody needs to get TV Land a new paper. Check this out. More here. Thanks, Andy.
Dan Zak: MOSS POINT, MISS. -- Three dollars'll get you the "gulf oil spill shot." Blue Curacao polluted by black vanilla vodka and Bailey's. The shot goes down sweet, which means i…
Craig Pittman: ABOARD THE PATROL VESSEL ORION -- Lt. Rama Shuster pulled the boat's throttle back to idle speed as his two crewmen peered at the mess in the water. Ten miles off…
Tom Lake: When Angela thinks about viruses, which is every day now, she sees herself at Costco, pushing a shopping cart. They could have swarmed from the handlebar to her fingers a…
Doyle Murphy: The boy and his friends played on the frozen pond in Newburgh's Downing Park, chipping the ice with a bat and kicking the shards across the surface. He was usually th…
Fred Hiers: Before May 13th, Robert Morgan had never had a run-in with the law. The 39-year-old unemployed warehouse worker had lived a mostly quiet life for the past seven year…
Joshua Saul from the Alaska Dispatch shared this fascinating deadline crime story that features one of the most candid jailhouse interviews I've ever seen. Is there room for imp…
We've been asked to post this: Description: The Virginian-Pilot, a 180,000-circulation daily serving Southeastern Virginia and Northeastern North Carolina, is seeking a reporter…
Dan Stockman's asking for feedback. He writes: Memorial Day pieces have an uncanny ability to slide over the line into schmaltz and sentimentality and I was desperately afraid that…
Two parts, by Paul Duggan: On the wrist of Sanquan "Bootsy" Carter, the bracelet looked like what it was: a band of cheap yellow metal, 1 5/8 inches wide, encrusted with scores of…
James Fallows: He hesitated for a minute, as if wanting to be very careful about making a potentially offensive point. Then he said that what astonished him was the predictable and…
Garrison Keillor: I ran into my daughter's favorite author, Mary Pope Osborne, in New York the other night, whose Magic Tree House books I've read to the child at night, and a mome…
C.J. Chivers (thanks, Justin): KHAN NESHIN, Afghanistan — Five-year-old Sadiq was not a casualty of war. He was simply unlucky. The boy had opened a sack of grain at his home early…
This was written around Christmas 2004, but it might as well have been Memorial Day. Dan Barry: THE songs and carols tell us that it is Christmastime in the city, with children lau…
M.I.A. tweeted Lynn Hirschberg's phone number as payback for Hirschberg's Times Magazine piece and because of all that I found this cool profile of Courtney Love: Courtney Love is…
Jeb Phillips: A new Lima Company leaves Columbus this morning. It's the company of Lance Cpl. Brandon Schoen, 25, whose pregnant wife is due June 1. He has never deployed. It's the…
Winning a Pulitzer prize is allegedly awesome. Being a Pulitzer finalist gets you 18 "almost" emails and, if you're me, drinks after work on Tuesday with Neil Brown, the very talen…
Hank Stuever: For all the gunk on television, it's hard to think of a more depressing show these days than the "spillcam," the live, continuous underwater footage of the broken BP…
When he was a boy, Vernon Lott wanted to be the next great poet. Alas, no dice. Years later, he found a box of his genius and realized that it was horrible. That set him on a quest…
Ten years ago, Justin Heckert emailed Walt Harrington a few clips and asked for some advice. Justin was a sophomore at Missouri and had just finished "Intimate Journalism." He was…
Mike Newall (thanks, Mara): In Courtroom 801, Maurice Ragland began to shake. The drug dealer who shot him twice in the head had just been led in for a May 6 sentencing hearing. Ra…
I found this story today on Longform.org, and I can't get it out of my mind. Anyone with an ego should give it a careful read. Lisa Belkin: It was fame that killed Robert O'Donnell…
Joan Garrett: For days he lived in the background of the train yard, hiding behind boxcars and lingering near brushy areas within view of the tracks. Nails is a veteran among the t…
Lane DeGregory chaneling Dr. Seuss: In the 1958 book The Cat in the Hat Comes Back, Dr. Seuss' nettlesome cat leaves a bright pink ring in the tub after taking a bath. The cat's at…
John Barry: TAMPA — The game: chicken. The opponents: a judge versus a woman with 12 homeless children and 12 suitcases of attitude. State agencies had a rent-free house ready for…
Joan Garrett and Joy Lukachick: The two women were busy cooking when the room down the hall — the room where their daughters played — fell silent.
Hank: "Lost" exhausts. It was a vacation in hell, our own wonderful hell, a "Gilligan's Island" getaway for our nervous, criss-cross-wired culture. A bunch of fictional characters…
How was Michael Kruse able to slip so far inside the monkey's head? Maybe because he's half rhesus macaque. His monkeybusiness is Storyboard's Notable Narrative.
Gene Weingarten's best, finally bound. Giant yay. (h/t Hank) Order it now from the Shoppes at Gangrey.
Henry Allen: O,the stained souls, the small-hours doubts, the troubled manhood of so many American men who didn't go to Vietnam when they could have — the strange guilt they seem t…
Chico Harlan (h/t Edward): I wasn't quite sure what to expect when I traveled from Washington to an ashram in northern India to meet my uncle, a holy man. Most people who meet him…
I remember stories. I remember titles, first sentences, initial paragraphs, sometimes fragments of entire sections within—and lines from the ending, too. That's the way my memory h…
Better hurry if you want to be part of the Gangrey Book Gang. (Remember, though: Blood in, blood out, bitches.) Order the first book, Barry Hannah's High Lonesome, from the Shoppes…
Thanks to Ramsey for pointing out this insanity. Thomas Fuller and Seth Mydans: BANGKOK — A renegade major general who allied himself with the protesters who have paralyzed Bang…
Mari A. Schaefer, Maria Panaritis, and Joelle Farrell (thanks, Mark): Vanessa Dorwart was out the door in a flash. The Interboro High School sophomore seldom went anywhere witho…
S.I. Rosenbaum: (May 15) -- On Thursday, the FBI raided a Mobil station owned by the guy who bought my last car. We watched him on TV, at my mother's house: Elias Audy, a small,…
Michael Kruse: He's fast, he's strong, he's smart. He's uncaged and to this point he's uncatchable. The monkey on the loose around the Tampa Bay area for the last year and a half i…
Here's another one of those stories that begins quietly and then builds to a stirring conclusion. Matthew Teague: We should have seen the demons in Andy about the time he pulled…
What are the elements of a great nonfiction story? Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter says there are four: "At Vanity Fair, our writers continue to do what they've always don…
T. Lake: During the war, as the Yankees came with their guns and torches, Henry Irby laid his gold in a dishpan and buried it in the clay. So goes the legend. Irby lived at the cen…
Alright. Wright's idea, so he gets first pick, and it looks like it's going to be Barry Hannah's Pulitzer-nominated short story collection High Lonesome. Mr. Hannah died a few m…
Who's down? Wright's idea. We all read the same book and get on here to take it apart. He's suggesting new fiction, perhaps a short story collection. Something unfamiliar. Th…
Let's talk about this one. From the archives. Michael Paterniti (h/t Wright): Go with him. Go out into the feed yards with Jack Hooker. His daddy was a cattleman, he was a cattlema…
Kevin Cullen (thanks, Mark): Fifty-nine years ago, Ginny Adams was 20 years old, pregnant, about to become a mother for the first time, but something went dreadfully wrong. She…
Erin Sullivan: LAND O'LAKES — She waited five hours at the Polk County Jail to see the man she loved, but a few hours meant nothing compared with the time without him; two years, 7…
Stuever: Apple pie, apple Betty. The sweetness, the spacey granny thing. The twinkle, the dimples, the cotton-ball coif. It's the simplest sort of television-era algebra: Let Sue A…
A few years back, when I was working at the Times Herald-Record up in New York, I had a hot story. A millionaire pizza-chain owner got whacked in his own mansion on the banks of th…
Dan Barry: ON EAST BAY, La. With the Gulf of Mexico oil spill prompting clients to cancel their plans to get themselves some redfish, the charter captain agreed, for a price, to he…
Jeb Phillips: One night in early 2009, Ohio National Guard medic Daniel Hutchison felt that he'd just had enough - enough of the drinking, the nightmares, the memories of Iraq - an…
Wright: PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti -- The man who died is buried in an unmarked grave. The digger worked fast that night. Business was good. He jammed the coffin into the opening at the…
From Gawker (h/t Joan): Reporters everywhere are in love with "crowdsourcing," in which sources magically come to them, saving the reporters several backbreaking telephone calls. B…
Eli Saslow: SHELL BEACH, LA. -- Johnny Nunez left for work at 5 a.m. out of habit, even though he feared he might never work again. He put on rubber boots, jeans and a T-shirt and…
Dan Barry: VENICE, La. Where the world runs out of road and into bayou, and all that is left beyond is the Gulf of Mexico, dozens of docked shrimp boats bob in place, restless.…
Big congrats to these guys: Andy Meacham, who took top honors in the Body of Work and Best obituary that goes beyond summing up a life categories from the Society of Professiona…
Check out the video storytelling from Adam Wisneski at the Tulsa World: video platform video management video solutions video player…
Rebecca S. Green: WARSAW – Three boys. With shy smiles, baggy T-shirts and not a hint of puberty or worry on their faces, they walked into Kosciusko County Superior Court on Thursd…
Ben and I are up here in the Catskills for the second-year affair of good folks, fine drinks and shop talk. Follow along here and also dip into the archives for tips and fun. Also…
OK, so Ben and I were just having an e-mail conversation about Gangrey, and we were talking about how many stories go by without comment. The ones that get the most comments are us…
Mark Johnson on the following story from Mike Berger: It's about 60 years old, but is the best piece of deadline writing I think I've ever read. According to the explanation, Meyer…
Thanks to Bill for pointing us to LongForm.org. And the backstory. And to Hank, for showing us where we can check it. (This needs to spread.)
Kaustuv Basu: CANAVERAL GROVES — The last time he came out here, Officer Vann Streety ran from a gunman who shot him six times. The last time, on this dirt road called Satellite Bo…
Dan Zak: BUCKINGHAM COUNTY, VA. — He emerges from the woods, a vision in wool. His walking stick leads and his black boots follow. Underneath a tricorn hat, his white hair flows in…
The 2010 National Magazine Award for feature writing goes to Skip Hollandsworth: Compared with the glistening two-story mansions that surrounded it, the house looked like something…
Jorge Valencia: Stamps the ferret was shipped from a Lynchburg post office in a cardboard box stuffed with food, toy cars and a doll. The destination was a town near San Juan, Puer…
Ralph Blumenthal (thanks, Craig): What, you need a zipper? O.K., Eddie Feibusch is going to sell you a zipper. Brass? Nylon? Swarovski rhinestone crystals? What color? Mystery orch…
James C. McKinley Jr.: The first thing you see when you arrive in this minuscule town is a defunct curio store where people once bought souvenirs of their visit to President George…
Doyle Murphy: The girl kept her feet under her as long as she could. A crowd had pushed into the intersection of Dubois and South streets — 40 or 50 teens shoving, flailing and pun…
Henry Allen: The dream is dying. It was this: a belief that the world has a special love for Americans, for our earnest innocence and gawky immediacy, for our willingness to share…
…this cash prize. (Either that or about a week's worth of the kids' college education.)
Andy Meacham: CLEARWATER — Jimmy Wise, a retired railroad engineer, was out of bed at the first suggestion of sunlight. He threw on an old pair of shorts and hit the beach right ou…
"Our business now, too many times, is a fat kid in a T-shirt in his mother's basement, eating Cheetos and writing his blogs — and we make it news."
This new Pulitzer winner by Gene Weingarten is worth another look: The defendant was an immense man, well over 300 pounds, but in the gravity of his sorrow and shame he seemed larg…
A conversation between Finkel and Doug Stanton starts at 4 today. Listen in as they discuss the art of narrative nonfiction, the state of writing today and much, much more. Thanks,…
Alexander Wolff (h/t Narrative Digest.): The men running at Joe Gaetjens wanted to grab him and make him theirs. Terrified, Gaetjens and other members of the 1950 U.S. World Cup te…
Ben, Waveney Ann and Edmund, and edited by Kelley: For Their Own Good. "You know what they say about second place," Ben just said over root beer floats in the office. "First loser.…
Robert Samuels: ELIZABETH CITY, N.C. — They lost their child somewhere in South Florida. The last time her mother held her was 44 years ago, as she raced through the doors of a hos…
Talking about mine explosions here today, and I was reminded of this one, from Vanessa Gezari: SAGO, W.Va. - No one could say who started it. All they knew was that someone in the…
Michael Kruse: The teens hid their bicycles in the bushes and approached the house in the dark on the dead-end road. The 19-year-old kicked the door in. The 17-year-old followed…
Wright Thompson: AUGUSTA, Ga. -- Three dudes with earpieces stand at the bottom of the stairs. They're dressed golf casual, but their square jaws give them away. It's early Monday…
Wyatt Mason: It was a bright, warm, blue-skied December afternoon in Central City, New Orleans, and in this neighborhood of humble shotgun houses and overgrown empty lots, a convoy…
Michael Zennie: The three thugs had taken Adam back to his apartment at gunpoint. One held a revolver on him while the two others began rummaging through his stuff. The man wit…
Do you have favorite blogs that exist in all those quiet shadows out there? Like Cult and Paste? Or The Small Story? Care to share them with the rest of us?
They picked. "The faculty of New York University's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute, together with a group of distinguished outside judges, has selected 'The Top Ten Works…
Erin Sullivan: NEW PORT RICHEY — As they walked through the hospital parking lot to see her dying father, Josh Cunha stopped and bent down on one knee. He had a diamond ring. "I…
Enjoy this one. I did. Luke Dittrich: The low snap of a single gunshot bursts from eight speakers at once. Each speaker is positioned behind a single man, and each man is positi…
As I mentioned earlier, I'm mining Blake Snyder's screenwriting book "Save The Cat" for some J tools. Snyder says there are 10 types of movies. Most are self-explanatory: Mo…
In the next few weeks I'll periodically post the first paragraph or two of a straight news story by a well-known writer. The first person to correctly identify the author gets a po…
Eli Saslow (thanks, Wright): The black binder arrived at the White House residence just before 8 p.m., and President Obama took it upstairs to begin his nightly reading. The briefi…
And that's how you do that. Stuever: Somewhere between hard science and the Banana Splits, television has this insatiable need to apply human story lines to the lives of animals, a…
Kruse: TAMPA — On Saturday morning, not 24 hours after the state announced a record-high unemployment rate, business students from the University of South Florida stood in the lobb…
We've talked about The Editor Wall before (here and here), but I still hear from folks who say they're not allowed to write STORIES for the paper. Do you have this problem? How do…
Okay. This is a good one coming off the writers workshop. Got an email from a guy at a mid-sized paper who wants to do good stuff and he's challenged because the bosses don't get i…
Advice via email from Roy Wenzl: Here's my take on how to get past the editor wall. First, just print out what "MIKE" said, and keep it with you. It's the best adivce possible, bec…
Chris Goffard: In late April 2007, Mike Penner published an article unlike any of the thousands he had written for the Los Angeles Times. It was brief, just 823 words, and placed w…
Lane DeGregory: LAKELAND They had just finished lunch, were just crumpling paper napkins into trash bins, when the call came through the school speakers: "Will the following girls…
You'll want to read this, I think. Frank Deford: There are many roles a man plays in life. Son, Husband, Father, Breadwinner. If he is successful: Star, Boss, Grand Old Man. But no…
William Wan: At 2 o'clock on a Monday morning, the sound of angry pounding sent Army Spec. Zachari Klawonn bolting out of bed. THUD. THUD. THUD. Someone was mule-kicking the door o…
Dan Barry: SAN ANTONIO, Fla. Ten years have passed since the country last tried to meet the essential, constitutional and all-but-impossible mandate to count everybody; the whole l…
David Mamet: THE AUDIENCE WILL NOT TUNE IN TO WATCH INFORMATION. YOU WOULDN'T, I WOULDN'T. NO ONE WOULD OR WILL. THE AUDIENCE WILL ONLY TUNE IN AND STAY TUNED TO WATCH DRAMA.
Liked this video from the Houston Chronicle.
David W. Dunlap: Bill Cunningham is probably the most honest photojournalist in New York. But he can also be pretty deceptive. Not that he tries to be. Rather, in his pursuit of a…
Stephanie Hayes: ST. PETERSBURG Here is Julian Grimes' fantasy: He lives in New York City, a splattered Bohemia where both street art and rules have gray areas. By day, he and his…
Lots of friends and Gangreyers took home National Headliners this year. I'm seeing Roy Wenzl, Zack McMillin, Todd Frankel, Neil Swidey … who else? Congratulations, one and all.
I'm reading a screenwriting book by Blake Snyder called "Save The Cat," hoping to tease out some lessons for journalism. Found one I really like in the introduction: Save the cat.…
Last year, at the Auburn Chautauqua, we were joined by Stephen Knudsen, a narrative artist and professor at the Savannah College of Art and Design. He told us his work as an adult…
Tall order, right? NYU is narrowing this list of nominations down to ten. What would you pick?
Rick Bragg: The first one I ate tasted like river mud. It was not that earthy, pungent, essence du monde that well-traveled people like to go on about over their quenelles aux hu&i…
Sara Corbett: This is a story about a nearly 100-year-old book, bound in red leather, which has spent the last quarter century secreted away in a bank vault in Switzerland. The boo…
Wow. Kruse: CLEARWATER — The obituary was only the beginning. It read like this: Czernia, Oren, 34, of Clearwater, passed away on Jan. 16, 2010. A University of Miami graduate, he…
Pat Jordan (thanks, Eric): I have been pursuing Jose, like the Holy Grail, for three months now, trying to nail him down for a magazine profile he'd agreed to do in January, partly…
Your assignment for today, students, is to write a narrative lede for this wonderful report about a stunt gone wrong. Assume you have spoken to at least five party guests and are e…
Richard Lake: On a dusty corner in North Las Vegas, there is a Buddhist temple. On that temple's property, there are cats. Many, many cats. Dozens of cats, in fact, have been known…
Here's an old one from Justin Heckert that's unlike just about anything else I've ever read. Check it out.
The Guardian asked 29 writers to list their rules for writing, and it's pretty freaking wonderful. Like … Jonathan Franzen's No. 4: Write in the third person unless a ­really d…
Remember this bit of genius about tip jars? Fail. The Miami Herald tried for two months but has decided to discontinue the voluntary pay program.
Check this one out. Did it work? Bill Stevens: NEW PORT RICHEY John Maccarelli awoke to a Pasco County sheriff's detective knocking on his door. What happened to the baby? Maccarel…
Dan Barry: EL PASO At the foot of a bridge that helps bind El Paso and Ciudad Juárez, a United States Border Patrol officer warns two pedestrians not to stray once they reac…
Meg Laughlin: PETIONVILLE, Haiti Jan. 12 was a happy day for the new American chef at the Villa Therese Hotel. Wearing a white chef's coat with his first name embroidered in black…
Gosh, Wright: OXFORD, England — Oxford at first light is an ode to potential.
I've got it on good info that we should all be parked in front of HBO tonight at 9:30 for "Reporter." Stuever's take: The world feels big and yet way too small in "Reporter," Eric…
Christopher Borrelli: Jenny Sanford came home to Chicago. Specifically to Winnetka, where she grew up as Jenny Sullivan. She came home for the most spectacular of reasons: She left…
Chris Jones: For the 281st time in the last ten months Roger Ebert is sitting down to watch a movie in the Lake Street Screening Room, on the sixteenth floor of what used to pass f…
Doyle Murphy: Twelve people have been killed in Newburgh since Jan. 1, 2008. Collectively, it's a crisis of violence in a small city. Thousands have packed funeral masses. Friends…
Tim Botos: His eyeglasses perched just above his nostrils, Fred Askew sipped tea and scanned the morning newspaper. His long legs stuffed beneath a table at the downtown McDonald's…
David Barstow: SANDPOINT, Idaho — Pam Stout has not always lived in fear of her government. She remembers her years working in federal housing programs, watching government lift st…
Dan Zak: Voices carry. They bounce off buildings. They come from just beyond the plane of visibility, behind the churning haze. No one's around, yet there are sounds now and then —…
Chivers: The helicopters landed before dawn Saturday in a poppy field beside a row of mud-walled compounds. The Marines ran into the darkness and crouched through the rotor-whipped…
Ben Montgomery: DELMAS, Haiti — If it had all gone according to plan, Jared Brown would not be standing here, tennis shoes planted on 5,500 pounds of American rice on a truck in th…
Excerpts from "A Free Shave," by Ernest Hemingway, from The Toronto Star Weekly, March 6, 1920: If you want to save $5.60 a month on shaves and hair cuts go to the barber college,…
A question regarding long-term reporting projects. With as many interviews as you're likely to do, you probably can't (or shouldn't) quote everyone. So is there a good way to tell…
Charles McGrath: J. D. Salinger, who was thought at one time to be the most important American writer to emerge since World War II but who then turned his back on success and adula…
Gary Smith: Maybe, if you were lucky, you had one too. Maybe you had your own patch of earth where your legs and mind might roam and you could make a sport your own. I once had suc…
Best thing out there. Charles Pierce: It's a wonder he didn't laugh out loud. Looking out over the frauds and lightweights and bland hunks of man-cheese that make up the assembled…
N.R. Kleinfield (thanks, Scott): At the laundromat, irregular things happen. People square off over washers — mine; no, mine. They sit on the counters where you were planning to fo…
Reid Forgrave: Walk into Donna Toombs' apartment on the ninth floor of Plymouth Place, a retirement community in Des Moines, and you can almost feel the ghost of Benjamin the Bunny…
Missed this way back when. Here's Chris Goffard: After the killings, the people on the river slept with their knives closer. They leashed guard dogs outside their tents and cardboa…
Two stories about searching. First, from Theola Labbé-DeBose and Wil Haygood (thanks, Mark): At 5:30 on the morning of Tuesday, Jan. 12, William Saint-Hilaire rose from his…
Joe Mozingo (thanks, Raja): Port-Au-Prince, Haiti – The night was filled with voices, murmuring then gathering together then rising into hymns and chants that carried far in the ba…
Dan Barry: DAYTON, Ohio Every 15 minutes the chiming bells of the Deeds Carillon mark time's passage in Dayton. Their ever-repeating song reminds the city of its deep connection to…
Have you read Jason Fagone's investigation of Marvin Harrison in GQ? It's stunning.
Erin Sullivan: NEW PORT RICHEY – Eighteen months ago, a 40-something man began a pen pal romance with a woman in prison. Her name is Theresa Jones. She's 49 and this was her fourth…
Funny Norwegian Newspaper Commercials – Click here for more blooper videos
Meg Laughlin: JIMANI, Dominican Republic — At the public hospital in this border town, no one can say how many amputations have been done since the earthquake. One surgeon says he…
Steve Lovelady, a legendary newspaper and magazine editor, died last Friday at age 66. I never had a chance to meet the man, but a few years ago I was at a conference in Fort Laude…
Kruse: LAND O'LAKES — Don Gould clocked in at the Publix here in central Pasco County. The green computer font on the small black screen told him to BEGIN SHIFT. Gould is 46, has b…
Tom Lake: Crickets at three in the morning on Chica­mauga Avenue in West Atlanta and the fog had lifted enough so that Ken could see the blue BMW naked in the driveway and he f…
Jonathan M. Katz (thanks, Nigel): PETIONVILLE, Haiti (AP) — I was sitting on my bed surfing the Internet when I noticed silence, followed by a weird groaning sound. I figured it wa…