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“Life of a Salesman” (31 Longreads in 31 Days, Day 20)
One of my favorite forms of nonfiction work is a well-written profile, especially when the subject of the piece isn’t a celebrity or a politician. It’s not hard to get people interested in a profile on Rhianna or LeBron James, but when a writer can look at at an everyday person and tell their story…
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Washington Post’s “Facebook Story”
As I’ve noted before, many modern web communications create natural narratives. “A Facebook Story” by Ian Shapira in the Washington Post is a powerful work of narrative journalism that follows the story of a pregnant woman’s journey through her posts and those of her family and friends. Most of the story is told through the…
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Long-form narrative and the art of cooking slow food
In the Washington Post last week, Joel Achenbach wrote an interesting feature on the diminishing opportunities for long-form narrative nonfiction in the newspaper-death-spiral/Twitter/iPhone era. As seems to be the case anytime that I read about trends in the magazine and news business world these days, the outlook isn’t promising. There seem to be two lines…
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Huffington Post jumps ahead of Washington Post in online readership
Arianna is conquering journalism? Editor & Publisher reports today that the Huffington Post, which didn’t exist until 2005, had more unique visitors than the Washington Post web site in September. It doesn’t help that the Post editorial page has drifted to the right for a decade, that the editors allow for gross inaccuracies and distortions…