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Sign up for the Nieman Storyboard newsletter, delivered every Friday in your inbox. *** Dear Storyboard community: This week we have a powerful new book chapter annotation from Storyboard contributor Mallary Tenore Tarpley , who spoke with acclaimed author Yiyun Li about her memoir, “Things in Nature Merely Grow,” about the death of her teenage son, James, who died by suicide six years after her…
In the aftermath of loss, platitudes and silver linings abound. They creep into greeting cards and consolations that attempt to put words to the unthinkable and instill hope in the possibility of closure. But in Yiyun Li’s experience, there is a limit to language, and there are no easy end points. Li’s searing memoir, “ Things in Nature Merely Grow ,” is about a wound that never fully heals: the…
Sign up for the Nieman Storyboard newsletter, delivered every Friday in your inbox. *** Dear Storyboard community: One of the great joys of this job at Storyboard is that every conversation I have with journalists gives me a chance to question everything I thought I knew about reporting. For example: Immersing yourself in someone's life won’t necessarily lead to a better or more accurate story. My…
On the latest episode of the Nieman Storyboard podcast , Storyboard editor Mark Armstrong sits down with journalist and Pulitzer finalist Shoshana Walter to discuss how she writes about addiction, recovery, and the criminal justice system — and how journalists can cover these stories with care. Walter is an investigative reporter for The Marshall Project and author of “Rehab: An American Scandal,”…
Sign up for the Nieman Storyboard newsletter, delivered every Friday in your inbox. *** Dear Storyboard community: The smoke arrived here in Seattle this week as wildfires continued to sweep through the region, and around the world, from Spokane to Spain . Storyboard contributor Kim Cross was filing her latest piece, about the 1949 Mann Gulch fire in Montana, when she and her family had to make…
On August 5, 1949, lightning ignited a wildfire on a slope near Mann Gulch, a tributary of the Missouri River in western Montana. A team of 15 smokejumpers parachuted in to fight it. Their foreman’s name was Wagner Dodge. It was a hot, dry summer, and on this windy day the fire blew up quickly. The firefighters began descending toward the Missouri River. Then the fire jumped from the ridgeline to…
Sign up for the Nieman Storyboard newsletter, delivered every Friday in your inbox. *** Dear Storyboard community: I'm excited to share a new Nieman Storyboard podcast episode , featuring an interview with four-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ken Armstrong . During his time at the Chicago Tribune, The Seattle Times, The Marshall Project, and ProPublica, Armstrong, a 2001 Nieman Fellow, has…
Ken Armstrong has reported, written, or edited many award-winning stories over his career, and that work has taken various forms — including traditional longform writing, podcasts, and television. But last year an experimental reporting project at Bloomberg News led him to explore an entirely new path: the world of web comics and graphic novels. The resulting story, “TrAPPed,” illustrated by Anand…
Sign up for the Nieman Storyboard newsletter, delivered every Friday in your inbox. *** Dear Storyboard community: I've been keeping an eye on stories from the narrative team at NOTUS , the Washington, D.C.-based news site that snapped up former Washington Post staffers including editor and Pulitzer finalist Kelley Benham French . Last week Ellie Silverman uncovered the surprising backstory of the…
Sign up for the Nieman Storyboard newsletter, delivered every Friday in your inbox. *** Dear Storyboard community: This week I'm excited to share the Season Two premiere of the Nieman Storyboard podcast , featuring a name familiar to Storyboard readers: Pamela Colloff , the award-winning journalist for ProPublica, staff writer at The New York Times Magazine, and author of the new book, “Catch the…
The Nieman Storyboard podcast returns for Season Two this week with Pamela Colloff , reporter for ProPublica, staff writer at The New York Times Magazine, and author of the new book “Catch the Devil: A True Story of Murder, Deception, and Injustice on the Gulf Coast.” "Catch the Devil" tells the story of a con artist named Paul Skalnik who spent time in and out of jail for a string of crimes. He…
Sign up for the Nieman Storyboard newsletter, delivered every Friday in your inbox. *** Dear Storyboard community: There are many ways to tell a great story in 2026 — through longform narrative, books, TikTok, YouTube — but not every story works for every platform. This is particularly true for investigative or in-depth narrative journalism. Social media and the creator economy — which forced us…
