Nieman Storyboard

Award-winning journalist and executive producer Soledad O’Brien joins Storyboard contributor Christina M. Tapper for this week’s Nieman Storyboard podcast to discuss her career journey from TV news to documentaries, and how she came to embrace the form for storytelling on on social issues. As one of the most respected voices in journalism, working at NBC, MSNBC, and CNN, O’Brien founded Soledad O’Brien Productions, a media production company that explores stories of race, class, gender, and i...

Award-winning journalist Tonya Mosley joins Storyboard contributor Christina M. Tapper for a discussion about interviewing, live coverage, and how to tell complex family stories. Mosley is the co-host of NPR’s “Fresh Air,” where she has in-depth conversations with newsmakers like politician and author Stacy Abrams, actor George Clooney, and artist Mickalene Thomas. It’s not just Mosley’s ability to have conversations with a wide range of people that make her one of the most notable inte...

Writer, author, and cultural critic Sasha Bonét joins Storyboard contributor Christina M. Tapper for a wide-ranging conversation about Bonét’s writing process for “The Waterbearers,” a memoir about mothers and daughters. Bonét and Tapper discuss surrendering to how a story unfolds, rather than forcing it, and how to turn a physical place into a key character. Subscribe to the Nieman Storyboard newsletter: https://niemanstoryboard.org/about/subscribe-to-nieman-storyboard/ Get the full episode ...

On the latest episode of the Nieman Storyboard podcast, award-winning journalist, author, and producer Danyel Smith joins Storyboard contributor Christina M. Tapper to discuss building the confidence to tell her own story and being a model for others to do the same. Smith, the first woman and first Black person to serve as editor-in-chief of Vibe, and who later served as editor of Billboard, is the author of “Shine Bright: A Very Personal History of Black Women in Pop.” The book is part...

The New Yorker’s Interactives Visual Features Editor Sam Wolson joins Storyboard Editor Mark Armstrong for a conversation about his latest story, “There’s No Place at Home: A Mother and Her Trans Teen Decide to Leave the U.S.,” about a mother and her trans teenager deciding to move to Mexico after President Trump’s efforts to restrict gender-affirming care. The story is an interactive visual feature that combines photorealistic 3D models — using photos taken at the family’s house in Mai...

Mark Armstrong sits down with Lane DeGregory, the Pulitzer Prize-winning enterprise reporter for the Tampa Bay Times covering "hope and humanity." DeGregory, whose work has been featured frequently on Storyboard over the years, is now celebrating 25 years at the Tampa Bay Times. She takes us through her process — from connecting with the community, to developing story ideas, and earning the trust of your subjects. She also reveals who inspires her work — from fellow journalists to music...

“This American Life” reporter and editor Nadia Reiman joins Storyboard Editor Mark Armstrong for a conversation about immigration, mass deportation under Trump’s presidency, and finding the human stories amid ongoing raids by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Reiman has worked for “This American Life” since 2018, and in 2019, she was part of the producing and reporting team for “The Out Crowd,” an episode examining the first Trump administration’s policy on asylum seekers, which...

Washington Post technology reporter Drew Harwell joins Storyboard Editor Mark Armstrong for a conversation about his feature story on “Emilycc,” a Texas-based Twitch streamer who has livestreamed her entire life, 24 hours a day, for the last three years. For his story, “Inside the life of a 24/7 streamer: ‘What more do you want?’,” Harwell traveled to Texas to meet Emily, and he wrote it with the understanding that he was bridging two very different worlds — the streaming community on T...

New York Times bestselling author, journalist, and athlete Kim Cross joins Storyboard Editor Mark Armstrong for a conversation about reporting for narrative nonfiction — focusing on reconstructed narratives and her feature story for Bicycling magazine, "The Alchemists," about the Afghan women who broke gender barriers in cycling before the Taliban took over their country. "They, as teenage girls, had convinced their culture to change its mind about the fact that women were not allowed t...

Storyboard editor Mark Armstrong sits down with Makena Kelly, senior writer for Wired covering the intersection of politics, power, and technology, about the magazine’s coverage of Trump's second term and how it has aggressively covered Elon Musk and DOGE's takeovers of federal agencies. Amid its breaking news coverage, Wired published “Inside Elon Musk’s Digital Coup” on March 13, a longform narrative that aimed to step back and tell the larger story of what was happening inside these ...

Nieman Storyboard is all about the craft of journalism and storytelling. Join host and Storyboard editor Mark Armstrong (Longreads, Ursa Story Company) for conversations with journalists, writers, and producers, in their own words, talking about how they do the work. We'll talk about stories that span every genre and platform — from longform narratives and books, to podcasting, documentaries, and social media. This show is presented by the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harv...