The Open Notebook – Storygrams

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 Tasneem Raja · March 19, 2019 · 0 comments

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 Jude Isabella · December 4, 2018 · 0 comments

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 Molly Birnbaum · 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 Rebecca Boyle · September 11, 2018 · 1 comment

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 David Wolman · June 12, 2018 · 0 comments

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 Jen Schwartz · 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 Brooke Borel · 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 Marguerite Holloway · 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 Mara Hvistendahl · 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 Amanda Mascarelli · October 3, 2017 · 0 comments

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 Roxanne Khamsi · March 21, 2017 · 0 comments

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 George Musser · February 28, 2017 · 6 comments