Storygrams

Right whales off the coast of Florida in 2014.

Storygram: Ed Yong’s “North Atlantic Right Whales Are Dying in Horrific Ways”

This spring, North Atlantic right whales started rapidly dying. In fact, they were dying so quickly that when Ed Yong, a staff writer at The Atlantic, reported the alarming trend in a news story, he needed to revise the text within hours of publishing. It can be difficult to pull off doom-and-gloom conservation stories, especially those involving charismatic megafauna. Here, Nadia Drake, a contributing writer at National Geographic, takes a look at what makes Yong’s piece excellent.

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by · October 8, 2019 · 1 comment
Storygram: Two Media Outlets Cover the “CRISPR Babies” News

Storygram: Two Media Outlets Cover the “CRISPR Babies” News

When a Chinese scientist revealed in November 2018 that twin babies had been born with genes he had edited using CRISPR gene-editing technology, science reporters jumped on the story. In this Storygram, we depart from our usual format to look closely at not one but two stories, one by Marilynn Marchione for The Associated Press and the other by Antonio Regalado for MIT Technology Review, that reported the CRISPR-babies news in the U.S.

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by · June 25, 2019 · 2 comments
Storygram: Marilynn Marchione’s “Chinese Researcher Claims First Gene-Edited Babies”

Storygram: Marilynn Marchione’s “Chinese Researcher Claims First Gene-Edited Babies”

Associated Press reporter Marilynn Marchione had exclusive access to the Chinese scientist He Jiankui, who announced in November 2018 that he had helped make the world’s first genetically edited babies using the gene-editing tool CRISPR. Marchione’s story reporting the announcement, “Chinese Researcher Claims First Gene-Edited Babies,” appeared on November 26, 2018. In the Storygram annotation below, I analyze aspects of Marchione’s story that contribute to its excellence, and I talk with Marchione about her experience reporting and writing the piece.

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by · June 25, 2019 · 2 comments
Storygram: Antonio Regalado’s “Exclusive: Chinese Scientists Are Creating CRISPR Babies”

Storygram: Antonio Regalado’s “Exclusive: Chinese Scientists Are Creating CRISPR Babies”

Chinese scientist He Jiankui announced in November 2018 that that he helped make the world’s first genetically edited babies using the gene-editing tool CRISPR. MIT Technology Review reporter Antonio Regalado learned details about the controversial experiment from a Chinese-clinical-trials registry. His story, “Exclusive: Chinese Scientists Are Creating CRISPR Babies,” was published on November 25, 2018. In the Storygram annotation below, I analyze key aspects of Regalado’s story that contribute to its impact.

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by · June 25, 2019 · 2 comments
Kayden and Jayden Fleurimond, four months old, rest as their older sister Berlynda, 10, dances in the living room of their aunt’s apartment. On Aug. 10, their mother Dacheca Fleurimond passed away at SUNY Downstate hospital after delivering her twin sons.

Storygram: Annie Waldman’s “How Hospitals Are Failing Black Mothers”

When a black woman in America goes into labor, which hospital she chooses for her delivery—or where the ambulance takes her, sometimes against her wishes—can determine whether she and her baby will leave the hospital together and alive. Annie Waldman’s investigation into maternal harm at hospitals that disproportionately serve black mothers, part of ProPublica and NPR’s award-winning Lost Mothers series, Annie Waldman “makes the invisible visible, and it does so with data,” writes Tasneem Raja.

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by · March 19, 2019 · 0 comments
Storygram: Joshua Sokol’s “Life After Mercury Poisoning”

Storygram: Joshua Sokol’s “Life After Mercury Poisoning”

The issue of methylmercury pollution rises and falls in news media. In “Life After Mercury Poisoning” for Mosaic, Joshua Sokol introduces readers to the aging victims of the most enduring case of mercury poisoning in the world. Sokol takes a complex scientific subject—the toxicity of methylmercury—and weaves it into the story of the survivors who have spent decades telling their stories. Here’s a look at what makes his piece excellent.

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by · December 4, 2018 · 0 comments
Storygram: Maria Konnikova’s “Altered Tastes”

Storygram: Maria Konnikova’s “Altered Tastes”

The science surrounding so much about food is complex, confusing, and constantly changing. In her New Republic story “Altered Tastes,” about the up-and-coming science of neurogastronomy, Maria Konnikova asks both “What is delicious?” and “How do we solve our world’s nutrition crisis?” Konnikova focuses her story on the fine-dining chef Heston Blumenthal, who is undertaking the gargantuan task of improving dining and health through the use of science. Here’s a look at what makes her story great.

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by · October 23, 2018 · 1 comment
An artist's conception shows two merging black holes similar to those detected by LIGO.

Storygram: Nicola Twilley’s “The Billion-Year Wave”

Physics—including astronomy, cosmology, theory, and the machinations of the universe at the very biggest and very smallest scales—is sometimes relegated to the science-writing sidelines. But in Nicola Twilley’s hands, high-energy physics is gripping, surprising, even funny—and that’s what makes her coverage of the first gravitational-wave detection so interesting. Here, we analyze what makes her story so good.

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by · September 11, 2018 · 1 comment
Storygram: Anna Maria Barry-Jester’s “Surviving Suicide in Wyoming”

Storygram: Anna Maria Barry-Jester’s “Surviving Suicide in Wyoming”

Suicide. Guns. Mental health. Not exactly light fare. Yet with thorough reporting, careful structure, and a compelling lead character, a story about such serious social issues doesn’t have to read like a white paper or a variant of the same opinion piece on gun deaths you’ve seen 20 times. In her measured and thoughtful piece “Surviving Suicide in Wyoming,” FiveThirtyEight’s Anna Maria Barry-Jester delivers an informative, sensitive, and nuanced look at a difficult issue.

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by · June 12, 2018 · 0 comments
Storygram: Sarah Wild’s “Bones Specialists Try to Prise Secrets from the Veld Bodies”

Storygram: Sarah Wild’s “Bones Specialists Try to Prise Secrets from the Veld Bodies”

In an award-winning Mail & Guardian story about the challenges of identifying “veld bodies,” or anonymous bodies found in the open grasslands of South Africa, freelance journalist Sarah Wild details the scientific limitations, logistical constraints, human errors, and lack of support that plague a broken network of law enforcement, mortuaries, and government identification systems. Here, Scientific American senior editor for features Jen Schwartz analyzes what makes the story succeed.

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by · March 20, 2018 · 0 comments
Entomologist Gale Ridge in her lab at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station in New Haven, Conn. The Madagascar hissing cockroaches on her sleeve are one of the species of insects she keeps there. (Originally published in STAT.)

Storygram: Eric Boodman’s “Accidental Therapists”

It can feel both violating and unnerving to witness a person whose mind is causing them severe suffering, as is the case for people with delusional parasitosis—a false belief of an infestation of insects, mites, or other creepy crawlies. In an award-winning feature, STAT reporter Eric Boodman deftly draws readers into this world. Here, Brooke Borel annotates the story to reveal what makes it so good.

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by · January 23, 2018 · 1 comment
Voyager 1, launched in 1977, crossed the border into interstellar space on Aug. 25, 2012, according to a new study.

Storygram: Andrew Grant’s “At Last, Voyager 1 Slips into Interstellar Space”

Andrew Grant’s 2013 Science News story about Voyager 1 entering interstellar space seems at first a straightforward news story. But in analyzing the piece, Columbia Journalism School’s Marguerite Holloway and students in her graduate science writing course “realized just how much skill, authority, and knowledge are packed into this piece.” The story won the AGU’s 2014 David Perlman Award for Excellence in Science Journalism. Here, Holloway and her students annotate Grant’s story to reveal what makes it successful.

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by · December 12, 2017 · 0 comments
Tibetan grasslands have been a lifeline for pastoralists for thousands of years.

Storygram: Jane Qiu’s “Trouble in Tibet”

Many Westerners hold an idealized vision of what Tibet contains: lamas clad in crimson robes, herds of yaks peacefully roaming the land, and colorful temples shrouded in mist. Degraded grasslands and fenced-off grazing zones don’t usually fit into that vision. Writing for Nature, Jane Qiu challenges romanticized notions, explaining how Chinese government policies have hurt the grasslands. Here, journalist Mara Hvistendahl analyzes what makes Qiu’s story successful.

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by · November 7, 2017 · 0 comments
Fliers on the wall of a public hospital commemorate young nurses and lab technicians who have died of Ebola.

Storygram: Amy Maxmen’s “How the Fight Against Ebola Tested a Culture’s Traditions”

When an Ebola epidemic swept through West Africa in 2014–2016, I was gripped by the absorbing stories that were being reported from the ground by journalists like Amy Maxmen, who wrote more than 15 pieces on Ebola from Sierra Leone. In this story annotation and Q&A interview, I consider what makes Maxmen’s award-winning National Geographic story on death rituals during the Ebola outbreak so successful.

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by · October 3, 2017 · 0 comments
Storygram: Charles Piller’s “Failure to Report”

Storygram: Charles Piller’s “Failure to Report”

Charles Piller’s 2015 STAT investigation “Failure to Report,” and the accompanying interactive graphic by Natalia Bronshtein, offered shocking details about institutions’ widespread failure to deposit clinical trial results into the public database ClinicalTrials.gov—and how that failure puts human lives at risk. Looking closely at Piller’s article, one sees the careful way he unpacks the unexpected revelations for readers. In the Q&A that follows, Piller shares how he methodically structured the piece and what it takes to dive headfirst into this sort of investigation.

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by · March 21, 2017 · 0 comments
Storygram: Natalie Wolchover’s “Visions of Future Physics”

Storygram: Natalie Wolchover’s “Visions of Future Physics”

Physicist Nima Arkani-Hamed is one of the most compelling figures in science today. He works on some of the most ambitious scientific ideas of our time; he tells childhood stories worthy of an action movie; and he has an enthusiasm so unabashedly geeky that it loops back around the other side and becomes hip. As compelling as Arkani-Hamed is, an article about him does not write itself. In “Visions of Future Physics,” published in Quanta magazine in September 2015, Natalie Wolchover pulls it off.

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by · February 28, 2017 · 6 comments
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Storygram: George Johnson’s “Why Everyone Seems to Have Cancer”

One result of being a cancer survivor is that I really don’t like reading stories about cancer. One result of George Johnson’s skill is that his New York Times Sunday Review story “Why Everyone Seems to Have Cancer” had me from the beginning of the story and held me straight through, thanks to Johnson’s careful story development and wonderful use of words. What a delight it was to spend time with the essay, which won the 2014 AAAS/Kavli Science Journalism Award in the Large Newspaper category, and see how Johnson made it sing.

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by · October 25, 2016 · 2 comments
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Storygram: Amanda Gefter’s “The Man Who Tried to Redeem the World with Logic”

In the 1940s a bohemian band of passionate and precocious thinkers began to try to build a mechanistic model of the brain and mind. In her Nautilus story “The Man Who Tried to Redeem the World with Logic,” Amanda Gefter explores the brief, bright-burning life of Walter Pitts, one of the central figures of the movement—and one of the most troubled. Here, find an annotated version of Gefter’s award-winning piece, plus an interview with Gefter about how she brought the story to life.

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by · September 20, 2016 · 0 comments
The Tohoku quake and tsunami killed at least 16,000 people. Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons. Published in East Bay Express.

Storygram: Azeen Ghorayshi’s “Sounding the Alarm”

Stories about earthquake early-warning systems are usually about the lack of them. But what if early-warning systems aren’t lacking any more? What if Japan has a system that works? And what if the U.S. West Coast simply can’t muster the energy to install one? That story is not the usual. It’s the one which Azeen Ghorayshi wrote for the East Bay Express and for which she rightly won prizes. Here, I take her story “Sounding the Alarm” apart so you can see how beautifully she put it together.

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by · July 12, 2016 · 1 comment
Tree physiologist Nate McDowell, center, climatologist Park Williams, left, and ecologist Craig Allen, right, are studying how trees die to help predict how forests will fare in a hotter future. Credit: Michael Clark.

Storygram: Cally Carswell’s “The Tree Coroners”

As a hiker and trail runner, I had become somewhat inured to the depressing sight of dead and dying conifers, victims of an epidemic of pine beetles that has been killing untold numbers of trees from Alaska to Mexico. But then I read “The Tree Coroners,” Cally Carswell’s award-winning story in High Country News. What follows is an annotated version of her story, with comments about individual elements that add up to a tour de force of science journalism.

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by · May 31, 2016 · 0 comments

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