In 1973, Richard Todd was a young editor at The Atlantic Monthly. His boss, Atlantic editor-in-chief Bob Manning, had just handed him a manuscript with a note scrawled across the top, “Let’s face it, this fellow can’t write.” The story was about a mass murder in California and its author was a student at the [...]
Posts Tagged ‘Aschwanden’
Richard Todd on Good Prose
Posted by Christie Aschwanden on May 7th, 2013
Posted in Behind-the-Story Interviews 
Tags: Aschwanden, Atlantic, Books, Collaboration, Editing, Kidder, Structure, Todd, Writer Interview 
1 Comment »Paige Williams investigates a dinosaur fossil underworld
Posted by Christie Aschwanden on March 26th, 2013
A dinosaur known as Tarbosaurus bataar once roamed what is now Mongolia’s Gobi Desert. About seventy million years later, its fossilized bones turned up at an auction in New York City, placing it at the center of a contentious battle between governments, paleontologists and professional bone hunters. From the moment Paige Wiliams learned about the black-market [...]
Posted in Behind-the-Story Interviews Tags: Aschwanden, New Yorker, Paleontology, Williams, Writer Interview 2 Comments »Happy New Year and Some News
Posted by Siri Carpenter and Jeanne Erdmann on January 14th, 2013
As we welcome 2013, we have some exciting changes in the works at TON. We’re pleased to announce that Christie Aschwanden has joined TON as managing editor. Christie will be commissioning and scheduling stories and making sure that our publication schedule stays on track. Please send your suggestions, questions for Ask TON and story pitches [...]
Natural Habitat: Christie Aschwanden
Posted by Siri Carpenter and Jeanne Erdmann on July 25th, 2012
In our “Natural Habitat” series, we invite science writers to share their working spaces — offices, spare bedrooms, coffee shops, hammocks — and the accoutrements that help them do their best work. (If you’d like to nominate your office to be featured at Natural Habitat, let us know.) Today, we drop in on Christie Aschwanden, an [...]
Ask TON: Dumb questions
Posted by Jeanne Erdmann and Siri Carpenter on October 26th, 2011
Our first-birthday binge continues today, with a third episode of Ask TON. (What is this all about? See here and here.) Today’s question: I’ve heard people say it’s important not to be afraid to ask “dumb” questions. What is your favorite “dumb” interview question when interviewing scientists? What has gotten you the most useful results? [...]
Naming the dog: The art of narrative structure
Posted by Christie Aschwanden on September 14th, 2011
The Open Notebook is doing something new. Since we launched last fall, we have focused on deconstructing the process that goes into individual stories that possess the quality of awesomeness. We love doing these story-behind-the-story interviews and have plenty more in the hopper. But, thanks to a very generous grant from the National Association of [...]
Posted in Elements of Craft Tags: Aschwanden, Elements-of-Craft, Guest Contributor, Longform, Narrative, Structure 5 Comments »William Saletan explores the malleability of memory
Posted by Christie Aschwanden on April 25th, 2011
In 2010, Slate national correspondent William Saletan wrote an eight-part series about experimental psychologist Elizabeth Loftus and her work on false memories. He began the series by inviting readers to take part in an interactive online experiment designed to illustrate how easily memories can be manipulated. (Try Slate’s experiment yourself here.) Readers were presented with [...]
Posted in Behind-the-Story Interviews Tags: Aschwanden, Guest Contributor, Profile, Psychology, Saletan, Slate, Writer Interview 1 Comment »Christie Aschwanden pits evidence against ‘truthiness’
Posted by Siri Carpenter on October 27th, 2010
Christie Aschwanden shows that when it comes to selling evidence-based health care reforms, hammering people with the facts won’t change entrenched beliefs—in fact, it may only strengthen them. For evidence-based reforms to succeed, Aschwanden writes, they must put in place a narrative that patients, doctors, and health policy makers can accept and even embrace. [Convincing [...]
Posted in Behind-the-Story Interviews Tags: Aschwanden, Carpenter, Drafts, Health, Medicine, Miller-McCune, Pitches, Writer Interview No Comments »