How to write clicky headlines (and how I learned)
Newsrooms had changed when I went back, in some ways for the worse. But for all I disliked about …
He taught me the most important writing lesson
I never had a better boss than Tom Gibboney, the publisher at a weekly in an Alaskan fishing village …
Now is the time for moral courage
My last piece attracted a lot of attention because it was about physical courage and worthy …
What I learned from a man who was eaten by a bear
What is a good man? That question always makes me think of a story I wrote as a newspaper reporter …
Here’s the path out of editing hell
Bad editing is torment. Office workers know what I am saying. After unclear initial direction, a …
Back in the trenches of local science reporting
Writing projects sometimes start at odd places. I met John Upton in a coffee shop near the Port …
How permission can lead to more authentic truth
Winning permission to enter whaling camp and the promise of honesty
Lying in a memoir is just plain lying
My rule is extreme and increasingly unpopular. I say everything in non-fiction should be true. You …
How tiny details spawned a TV doppelganger
It was a weird feeling to have my former boss and old friend portrayed on television in an eerily …
Paywalls are necessary, and they’re killing democracy
For all the attention paid to keeping traditional media alive, not much has been said about how to …
Throw away your list of questions
Here are some of the rules I’ve learned from doing thousands of interviews. Real people are more …
Everyone has a story. Lou Grant said so
During our second conversation, over coffee, it came out that what Dan wanted most at 36 was to grow …
If you must write, you can write
I was ready to go home at the end of my work day when I got a call about a possible mutiny at sea. …
The best thing about the best writing
In 1934, my grandmother, Mildred Wohlforth (pen name Mildred Gilman), went to Germany to interview …