America S Best Newspaper Writing

"America's Best Newspaper Writing" represents the "best-of-the-best" from 25 years of the American Society of Newspaper Editors (ASNE) Distinguished Writing Awards competition. With an emphasis on local reporting, new stories including more on crisis coverage, and pedagogical tools to help students become better writers, the second edition is the most useful and up-to-date anthology available for feature writing and introduction to journalism classes.

Best Newspaper Writing 2002 celebrates the winners of the ASNE Distinguished Writing Awards, including the Jesse Laventhol Prizes honoring deadline reporting, and featuring the Community Service Photojournalism Award on a companion CD-ROM. N.R. Kleinfeld of the New York Times reconstructed the morning of Sept. 11 with stories and stunning details. Jim Dwyer's short stories in the New York Times, resurrected from the smallest pieces of Sept. 11 debris, accomplish a feat that Dwyer himself describes in one of his poignant stories. The Wall Street Journal staff, amid a cloud of personal grief and national uncertainty, produced stories so stirring, encompassing, and complete that they remained relevant and vibrant long after Sept. 11. John McCormick, an editorial writer for the Chicago Tribune, displays amazing range -- from the contradictions of praying for peace amid war in Afghanistan, to a tribute to a murdered Chicago cop. Steve Lopez's storytelling always surprises, whether he's chronicling the unfolding tragedy of Sept. 11, or knocking back a six-pack of beer and a dozen doughnuts in the name of journalistic inquiry. Anne Hull of the Washington Post explores the gentrification of a neighborhood and the aftershocks of Sept. 11. Ellen Barry of the Boston Globe writes of the "Lost Boys" of Sudan, and their odyssey from African cattle herders to urban teens. J. Albert Diaz of the Miami, Herald captures the elusive concept of the American Dream.

Between the 1970s and the 1990s American journalists began telling the news by telling stories. They borrowed narrative techniques, transforming sources into characters, events into plots, and their own work from stenography to anthropology. This was more than a change in style. It was a change in substance, a paradigmatic shift in terms of what constituted news and how it was being told. It was a turn toward narrative journalism and a new culture of news, propelled by the storytelling movement. Thomas Schmidt analyzes the expansion of narrative journalism and the corresponding institutional changes in the American newspaper industry in the last quarter of the twentieth century. In doing so, he offers the first institutionally situated history of narrative journalism’s evolution from the New Journalism of the 1960s to long-form literary journalism in the 1990s. Based on the analysis of primary sources, industry publications, and oral history interviews, this study traces how narrative techniques developed and spread through newsrooms, advanced by institutional initiatives and a growing network of practitioners, proponents, and writing coaches who mainstreamed the use of storytelling. Challenging the popular belief that it was only a few talented New York reporters (Tome Wolfe, Jimmy Breslin, Gay Talese, Joan Didion, and others) who revolutionized journalism by deciding to employ storytelling techniques in their writing, Schmidt shows that the evolution of narrative in late twentieth century American Journalism was more nuanced, more purposeful, and more institutionally based than the New Journalism myth suggests.

Taking a thematic approach, this new companion provides an interdisciplinary, cross-cultural, and international study of American literary journalism. From the work of Frederick Douglass and Walt Whitman to that of Joan Didion and Dorothy Parker, literary journalism is a genre that both reveals and shapes American history and identity. This volume not only calls attention to literary journalism as a distinctive genre but also provides a critical foundation for future scholarship. It brings together cutting-edge research from literary journalism scholars, examining historical perspectives; themes, venues, and genres across time; theoretical approaches and disciplinary intersections; and new directions for scholarly inquiry. Provoking reconsideration and inquiry, while providing new historical interpretations, this companion recognizes, interacts with, and honors the tradition and legacies of American literary journalism scholarship. Engaging the work of disciplines such as sociology, anthropology, African American studies, gender studies, visual studies, media studies, and American studies, in addition to journalism and literary studies, this book is perfect for students and scholars of those disciplines.

'Best Newspaper Writing 2006-2007' celebrates the winners and finalists of the American Society of Newspaper Editors annual competition. The text offers a wide array of exemplary writing and photojournalism, providing quality models students can analyse and emulate.