Stories Can Save Us: America’s Best Narrative Journalists Explain How

by Matt Tullis

Great journalism relies on a narrative arc to engage and inform the reader. Stories Can Save Us looks at how the best reporters and writers craft narrative literary journalism. Journalist Matt Tullis uses the material he gathered in the more than seventy-five interviews he conducted with the best narrative and literary journalists in the country through his podcast, The Podcast, to show how these professionals conceive and writesuch compelling stories. Through his podcast, Tullis interviewed Pulitzer Prizewinners, National Magazine Awardwinners, and many authors of books of narrative journalism, including New York Times best-selling authors. He also spoke with reporters of different races and backgrounds, styles and strengths—journalists who have been published in the most prestigious newspapers and magazines—to How do they find story ideas? How do they reach out to potential story subjects? What are their interviewstrategies? How do they conduct other information gathering? How do they come up with their amazing and enticing leads? How do they develop story structure? How does the story change in the revision process? How do they make their stories great and make them into the types of stories that people read and talk about for years? Through Tullis’s conversations with these top-tier journalists, we are offered a window into their methods and practices as well as the motivations behind great journalism and how it speaks to the cultural climate of its time. Tullis’s goal was to expand the power and potential of what amazing reporting and narrative writing can do, believing that it can literally change a reader’s mood and, possibly, a reader’s life.

Genres: Writing, Journalism, Nonfiction

Kindle Edition

Published June 1, 2024

Reviews

[ellis goud · Rating 5 out of 5]

5/5
I actually really enjoyed reading this book! I'm not a huge podcast person, so it was nice to read through these interviews. This book included narrative journalists across so many disciplines and featured a variety of intersectional topics, which was really refreshing. (Yay for not all white people talking about other white people!) I found this both interesting and helpful even though I don't want to be a narrative journalist. I might start looking into historic/archival journalism though...

[Madison · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read for a class, wound up loving it. I love journalism and journlaists and the human curiosity that connects us all.