Welcome from Christopher Wilson and Some Background on this Site
Reading Narrative Journalism is a multimedia project designed to introduce undergraduates and beginning graduate students to reading and interpreting what is generally called “narrative journalism”–that is, long-form journalistic texts that tell a story. Though the site is not a textbook, it proceeds like one: with five main chapters, a group of exercises and classroom activities, and a “glossary” of terminology. Throughout this site, I suggest ways students can approach this relatively new, fascinating genre, and think about the literary forms and reporting strategies journalists have used to write feature and book-length stories about poverty, migration, war and many other subjects. This site covers mainstream principles and ideas in the journalism trade as well as in some of the newer, more experimental forms in the American tradition. Classic and contemporary writers from the U.S.–Jacob Riis, John Hersey, Alex Kotlowitz, Michael Herr, Joan Didion, Barbara Ehrenreich and many more–are discussed in these pages. For a list of writers and works covered, you can click on this underline for a quick preview.
The site was originally developed in 2014-16 at Boston College, under the auspices of the university’s Center for Teaching Excellence, within the platform known as “Mediakron.” (It is now in a WordPress platform.) If you’d like to read a full account of the site’s origin and development, I gave such an overview for Literary Journalism Studies, Vol. 10, No. 2, Fall 2018. You may be able to directly go to that essay by clicking here.
This is its third and final edition (the second edition having appeared in 2020). Since that second edition, I have added new teaching materials; expanded the Bibliography; edited and tightened the prose and argument of all Chapters and Glossary entries; added an Afterword; and recrafted and expanded the section entitled “Short Takes.”
If you’d like to watch a brief video introduction I created for the first edition, click on the arrow inside the box below. The video runs just under 10 minutes:
Contact Information and Acknowledgements
Of course, no design of this kind comes without imperfections. As you will quickly see, this site focuses almost exclusively on the American tradition (and, in turn, writers working primarily in English). Narrative journalism is of course an international phenomenon, and I have drawn considerably on the scholarship coming from that still-developing field of study. (For an introduction to these traditions in other countries, you might begin by consulting the site of the International Association of Literary Journalism Studies [“IALJS”], whose members have generously supported my work and this site for years. Their work is reflected as well in the Bibliography to this site. Meanwhile, in this site “contemporary” refers to writers who have appeared in roughly the last 35 years or so. But this is an ever-changing and growing field–I’m sure there are more writers to discover in countries I need to know more about. And finally, of course there have been developments in digital journalism that are changing this field considerably. At most what I’ve been able to do is include some links to some of the finer examples that have made it into my own teaching, and to recognize scholarship about this important development..
I’d love to hear your comments and ideas about ways to improve this site (or my own thinking generally). For more information or suggestions, please contact me–Christopher Wilson–at wilsonc@bc.edu or use the contact link on the menu bar above.
I also must thank the many friends, students and colleagues who have contributed directly or indirectly to this project: I would especially like to thank Tim Lindgren and Brad Mering, the designers and gurus of MediaKron, and their colleagues in CTE and the Digital Library team at O’Neill Library (especially Jane Morris). Along with learning so much from a CTE collaborative cohort that Tim led in 2014-2015, I presented some of the teaching materials at an IALJS session in 2015; thanks for help and suggestions there, from Mitzi Lewis, Jeff Neely, and especially David Abrahamson. Here at Boston College, along with many colleagues who shared ideas about my work, I would be remiss if I did not thank Lad Tobin, whose wide knowledge of literary nonfiction is matched only by his generosity and open-mindedness. Jim Smith and Carlo Rotella, along with Lad, pitched in during the final stages of this project, and helped it get over the finish line. For good conversation and professional support along the way, I would also like to acknowledge Bill Dow, Eric Weiskott, Mike Serazio, Nirmal Trivedi, Andrew Sofer, Sue Roberts, Allison Adair, Cecelia Aare, Pascal Sigg, Roberta Maguire, John Hartsock, Chris Boucher, Bill Reynolds, and Thomas Schmidt.
In the summer of 2016, Gregory Kalscheur, S.J., Dean of the Morrissey College of Arts and Sciences at Boston College, supported an external peer review for this project. As a result, I received two tremendously incisive reports from anonymous external readers, who helped me in ways they can’t imagine. Naturally, all the errors here are mine.
Thanks to all!