Nieman Storyboard

New York Times national correspondent Kurt Streeter joins Nieman Storyboard host Mark Armstrong for a live edition of the podcast at the 2026 Society for Features Journalism conference on Oct. 23 at Arizona State University's Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication. Streeter talked about his method — which he calls "the fine art of hanging out" — and the stories and characters he discovered by slowing down to take the time to look for them.

“It’s basic reporting layered with patience, empathy, curiosity, and really not rushing, not forcing things — definitely not forcing things, which is maybe a little bit different then when you’re doing quick-hit stories that are one- or two-day or even one-week turnarounds,” he said. 

Streeter's reporting career has included stints at the Baltimore Sun, ESPN, and Los Angeles Times, where he published one of his favorite stories, “The Girl,” a five-part series about an 8-year-old girl named Seniesa Estrada, who dreamed of becoming a professional boxer. Her dream eventually came true, and Streeter revisited her story for The New York Times in 2023. 

Streeter was drawn to sports as an athlete himself. Streeter is a graduate of UC Berkeley, where he was the first African American to be a captain of the men’s tennis team and he helped lead the Golden Bears to the 1989 indoor national championship. He's written frequently about tennis, including a moving story about lessons from his father at the U.S. Open. 

Get the full reading list and show notes: https://niemanstoryboard.org/2026/11/06/new-york-times-kurt-streeter-on-art-of-hanging-out/

Subscribe to the Nieman Storyboard newsletter: https://niemanstoryboard.org/about/subscribe-to-nieman-storyboard/

Show credits

Hosted and produced by Mark Armstrong
Audio engineer: Elaine Wilt
Show notes: Emilia Wisniewski
Episode editor: Kelly Araja
Audience editor: Adriana Lacy
Promotional support: Ellen Tuttle
Operational support: Paul Plutnicki, Peter Canova

Nieman Foundation curator: Henry Chu
Music: “Golden Grass,” by Blue Dot Sessions (www.sessions.blue)
Cover design by Adriana Lacy

Nieman Storyboard is presented by the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard.

This week's guest on the Nieman Storyboard podcast, journalist Wudan Yan, is founder of the fact-checking agency Factual, which provides fact-checking services for journalists, authors, and nonprofits. Writing for her newsletter, she recently made the case that fact-checking itself needs to evolve to meet the moment, so we talked about how journalists can make the most of the process in their own work. 

“ My true fear is that people are just going to become desensitized to the amount of fake information that's out there and not care,” Yan told me. But “as long as people care and value accuracy, I think fact-checking has a place, I think journalism has a place.” 

Yan was pursuing a doctoral degree in cancer biology when she decided to make the jump into journalism, starting as a fact-checker for publications including the science magazine Nautilus. She eventually moved into reporting, developing an understanding for what it meant to tell science and environmental stories through a narrative lens. Her writing has appeared in The Atlantic, California Sunday Magazine, High Country News, MIT Technology Review, The New York Times, and Popular Mechanics, among other publications. 

Reading list: Authors, books, essays, and publications mentioned

• Wudan Yan's website
• Factual agency 
• Nautilus Magazine 
• “The Vice of Spice: Confronting Lead-Tainted Turmeric" (Wudan Yan, Undark, 2023)
• UC Berkeley Journalism Fellowships 
• Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting
• “The traditional ways of thinking about fact-checking aren’t enough anymore” (Wudan Yan, 2026)
• “We need fact-checkers more than ever. Here's how to work with one.” (Kim Cross, Nieman Storyboard 2025)

Show Credits

Hosted and produced by Mark Armstrong
Episode editor: Kelly Araja
Audience editor: Adriana Lacy
Promotional support: Ellen Tuttle
Operational support: Paul Plutnicki, Peter Canova

Nieman Foundation curator: Henry Chu
Music: “Golden Grass,” by Blue Dot Sessions (www.sessions.blue)
Cover design by Adriana Lacy

Nieman Storyboard is presented by the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard.

Our guest on this week's Nieman Storyboard podcast, editor and bestselling author Sari Botton, is an expert in the art of personal storytelling. Through her popular Substack publications, Oldster Magazine, Memoir Land, and Adventures in “Journalism,” and before that as essays editor for Longreads (where we worked together), Botton has shepherded hundreds of writers through the process of telling their own stories — and doing so with a thoughtful eye for what makes personal essays connect with readers without being sensational.

“People are so concerned about whether they're going to be a likable character if they tell the ugly truth,” she said. “[But] that's what makes you a likable character. It makes you someone that people can relate to. It means you're just human.”

Subscribe to the Nieman Storyboard newsletter: https://niemanstoryboard.org/about/subscribe-to-nieman-storyboard/

Even after publishing so many writers, Botton herself struggled with whether she should write her own memoir, and the impact it might have on her family. Eventually, she found an approach that allowed her to speak her truth while being mindful of family members' privacy, and her book, “And You May Find Yourself…Confessions of a Late-Blooming Gen-X Weirdo,” was published in 2022. 

Botton also was the editor of two bestselling anthologies, “Goodbye to All That: Writers on Loving and Leaving New York,” and “Never Can Say Goodbye: Writers on Their Unshakable Love for New York.” 

This week, her magazine Oldster celebrated its fifth birthday, sharing stories that "explore what it means to travel through time in a human body, at every phase of life.” Botton is now working on an Oldster anthology and podcast, and her newsletters now have more than 125,000 subscribers. 

Show Credits

Hosted and produced by Mark Armstrong
Episode editor: Kelly Araja
Audience editor: Adriana Lacy
Promotional support: Ellen Tuttle
Operational support: Paul Plutnicki, Peter Canova

Nieman Foundation curator: Henry Chu
Music: “Golden Grass,” by Blue Dot Sessions (www.sessions.blue)
Cover design by Adriana Lacy

Nieman Storyboard is presented by the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard.

Storyboard editor Mark Armstrong sits down with audio documentary producer Will James to discuss his work with Seattle's KUOW and his latest investigative project, a collaboration with journalists from The Seattle Times, NPR's “Embedded” and Omari Salisbury's Converge Media. 

“We Keep Us Safe,” an eight-episode narrative podcast, looks into the unsolved killing of 16-year old Antonio Mays Jr., who was shot in Seattle’s CHOP (Capitol Hill Occupied Protest) zone during the 2020 protests following George Floyd's murder.

Alongside Seattle Times reporters Sydney Brownstone and David Gutman, the reporting team interviewed nearly 100 people to investigate the shooting of Mays Jr., which occurred after Seattle police had withdrawn from the protest zone. Mays Jr.'s family won a $30.5 million verdict against the city for negligence over its emergency response to the shooting. 

Subscribe to the Nieman Storyboard newsletter: https://niemanstoryboard.org/about/subscribe-to-nieman-storyboard/

Show Credits

Hosted and produced by Mark Armstrong
Associate producer: Marina Leigh
Episode editor: Kelly Araja
Audience editor: Adriana Lacy
Promotional support: Ellen Tuttle
Operational support: Paul Plutnicki, Peter Canova

Nieman Foundation curator: Henry Chu
Music: “Golden Grass,” by Blue Dot Sessions (www.sessions.blue)
Cover design by Adriana Lacy

Nieman Storyboard is presented by the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard.

On the latest episode of the Nieman Storyboard podcast, Storyboard editor Mark Armstrong sits down with journalist and Pulitzer finalist Shoshana Walter to discuss how she writes about addiction, recovery, and the criminal justice system — and how journalists can cover these stories with care. 

Walter is an investigative reporter for The Marshall Project and author of  “Rehab: An American Scandal,” published last year and released this month in paperback. The book weaves together four different stories of people whose lives or work have been impacted by addiction treatment in the U.S., and it shines a light on a system where private treatment centers have little oversight, leading to potential mistreatment, exploitation, and corruption.   

“I think for everyone who participated in this book, the driving force was wanting their stories to mean something, to serve a higher purpose,” Walter says. “My hope with any piece of investigative journalism that I do is to raise awareness of an injustice that's going on in the hopes that it can help lead eventually to change.”

Get the full show notes and reading list: https://niemanstoryboard.org/2026/08/14/journalist-shoshana-walter-telling-stories-of-addiction-recovery/

Subscribe to the Nieman Storyboard newsletter: https://niemanstoryboard.org/about/subscribe-to-nieman-storyboard/

Show Credits

Hosted and produced by Mark Armstrong
Associate producer: Marina Leigh
Episode editor: Kelly Araja
Audience editor: Adriana Lacy
Promotional support: Ellen Tuttle
Operational support: Paul Plutnicki, Peter Canova

Nieman Foundation curator: Henry Chu
Music: “Golden Grass,” by Blue Dot Sessions (www.sessions.blue)
Cover design by Adriana Lacy

Nieman Storyboard is presented by the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard.

Ken Armstrong has reported, written, or edited many award-winning stories over his career, and that work has taken various forms — including traditional longform writing, podcasts, and television. But last year an experimental reporting project at Bloomberg News led him to explore an entirely new path: the world of web comics and graphic novels. 

The resulting story, “TrAPPed,” illustrated by Anand RK, and written by Suparna Sharma and Natalie Obiko Pearson, told the story of a neurologist in India who was held captive under "digital arrest” as part of an elaborate scam. The web comic was paired with a written longform narrative about the dark side of India's digital revolution. 

In May, the story was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Illustrated Reporting and Commentary. It's just one example of the many ambitious stories Armstrong was hired to help bring to life at Bloomberg in his role as senior editor and narrative coach for global investigations. 

For this week's Nieman Storyboard podcast, I talked to Armstrong about the importance of storytelling in investigative journalism, and how narrative has been central to his work throughout his career. 

Get the full show notes: https://niemanstoryboard.org/2026/07/31/pulitzer-winner-ken-armstrong-storytelling-investigative-journalism/

Show Credits

Hosted and produced by Mark Armstrong
Episode editor: Kelly Araja
Audience editor: Adriana Lacy
Promotional support: Ellen Tuttle
Operational support: Paul Plutnicki, Peter Canova

Nieman Foundation interim curator: Henry Chu
Music: “Golden Grass,” by Blue Dot Sessions (www.sessions.blue)
Cover design by Adriana Lacy

Nieman Storyboard is presented by the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard.

The Nieman Storyboard podcast returns for Season Two with Pamela Colloff, reporter for ProPublica, staff writer at The New York Times Magazine, and author of the new book “Catch the Devil: A True Story of Murder, Deception, and Injustice on the Gulf Coast.” 

Note: this episode includes discussion of cases involving sexual assault. 

Subscribe to the Nieman Storyboard newsletter: https://niemanstoryboard.org/about/subscribe-to-nieman-storyboard/

"Catch the Devil" tells the story of a con artist named Paul Skalnik who spent time in and out of jail for a string of crimes. He soon became a frequent jailhouse informant for prosecutors who were looking for confessions from people who were locked away and awaiting trial. 

Skalnik ended up testifying in at least 37 cases in Pinellas County, Florida, alone. His testimony sent dozens of people to prison, four of whom were ultimately sentenced to death. Colloff's book focuses on the trial of a man named Jim Dailey, who had been linked to the murder of a 14-year-old girl. 

This is Colloff's first book, after years of reporting award-winning longform narratives starting at Texas Monthly. Colloff talks about the origins of the idea, and breaks down the reporting, editing, and fact-checking process. We also discuss how true crime reporting has evolved toward an approach that is more trauma-informed and sensitive to the impact on victims and victims' families. 

Show credits 

Hosted and produced by Mark Armstrong
Episode editor: Kelly Araja
Audience editor: Adriana Lacy
Promotional support: Ellen Tuttle
Operational support: Paul Plutnicki, Peter Canova

Nieman Foundation interim curator: Henry Chu
Music: “Golden Grass,” by Blue Dot Sessions (www.sessions.blue)
Cover design by Adriana Lacy

Nieman Storyboard is presented by the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard.

Author Tricia Romano joins Storyboard editor Mark Armstrong to talk about how she reported and wrote her oral history of The Village Voice, “The Freaks Came Out to Write: The Definitive History of the Village Voice, the Radical Paper That Changed American Culture.” 

Romano was a writer for the legendary New York City alt-weekly, and it was a Voice reunion in 2017, following the death of former Voice staffers Nat Hentoff and Wayne Barrett, that led her to take on the project. 

Romano talks about her process for staying organized during the project, how she supplemented her book advance with grants to help fund it, and how to determine whether an oral history is the right path for your book or story idea. 

Romano, who's also a Storyboard contributor, began her eight-year career at the Village Voice as an intern. As a contributing writer, she wrote features and award-winning cover stories about culture and music. Her reported column, Fly Life, gave a glimpse into the underbelly of New York nightlife. She has been a staff writer at the Seattle Times and served as the editor in chief of the Stranger, Seattle’s alternative newsweekly. A fellow at MacDowell, Ucross, and Millay artist residencies, and her work has been published in The New York Times, Rolling Stone, the Daily Beast, Men’s Journal, Elle, Alta Journal, and the Los Angeles Times, among other publications.

Get the full show notes and reading list from this episode: 

https://niemanstoryboard.org/2026/02/19/tricia-romano-how-to-write-an-oral-history/

Subscribe to the Nieman Storyboard newsletter: 

https://niemanstoryboard.org/about/subscribe-to-nieman-storyboard/

Show Credits

Hosted and produced by Mark Armstrong
Episode editor: Kelly Araja
Audience editor: Adriana Lacy
Promotional support: Ellen Tuttle
Operational support: Paul Plutnicki, Peter Canova

Nieman Foundation interim curator: Henry Chu
Music: “Golden Grass,” by Blue Dot Sessions (www.sessions.blue)
Cover design by Adriana Lacy

Nieman Storyboard is presented by the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard.

Award-winning journalist and executive producer Soledad O’Brien joins Storyboard contributor Christina M. Tapper for this week’s Nieman Storyboard podcast to discuss her career journey from TV news to documentaries, and how she came to embrace the form for storytelling on on social issues.

As one of the most respected voices in journalism, working at NBC, MSNBC, and CNN, O’Brien founded Soledad O’Brien Productions, a media production company that explores stories of race, class, gender, and identity, in 2013. Most recently, she anchored and produced the political magazine show "Matter of Fact with Soledad O'Brien" during a 10-season run for Hearst TV. O’Brien’s reporting has been honored with 10 Emmys and three Peabody Awards.

In 2025, O’Brien served as the executive producer for HBO Max’s documentary short, “The Devil is Busy,” about a day at an Atlanta abortion clinic and the fight for reproductive rights. O’Brien and her team decided to tell the story through Tracii, the head of security at the clinic who is a devout Christian. Patients and clinicians are featured in the documentary, but it’s Tracii’s story that is the thread from start to finish in this post-Dobbs era piece.

Subscribe to the Nieman Storyboard newsletter: https://niemanstoryboard.org/about/subscribe-to-nieman-storyboard/

Listening and Watching List:

• “Murder on the Towpath with Soledad O’Brien” 
• “Who Killed JFK?”
• “War on La Radio”
• “The End of Affirmative Action”
• “Black and Missing”
• “The Perfect Neighbor”
• “Katrina: Come Hell or High Water”
• Geeta Gandbhir
• Christalyn Hampton

Show credits

Hosted and produced by Mark Armstrong
Episode producer and interview by Christina M. Tapper
Episode editor: Kelly Araja
Audience editor: Adriana Lacy
Promotional support: Ellen Tuttle
Operational support: Paul Plutnicki, Peter Canova

Nieman Foundation interim curator: Henry Chu
Music: “Golden Grass,” by Blue Dot Sessions (www.sessions.blue)
Cover design by Adriana Lacy

Nieman Storyboard is presented by the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard.

Journalists Leah Sottile and Ryan Haas join Storyboard Editor Mark Armstrong to discuss the second and final season of their serialized podcast “Hush,” from Oregon Public Broadcasting. 

Sottile and Haas first began working together on the 2019 OPB/Longreads podcast “Bundyville,” and they've continued their collaborative work as journalists and podcasters ever since. This week, they've announced that they will be starting an independent publication called The Western Edge. (For updates, you can follow Sottile and Haas on Bluesky or on their individual Substacks.)

Get the full show notes: https://niemanstoryboard.org/2026/01/22/leah-sottile-ryan-haas-true-crime-podcasting-journalism/

Subscribe to the Nieman Storyboard newsletter: https://niemanstoryboard.org/about/subscribe-to-nieman-storyboard/

Reading list

• Leah Sottile: Bluesky, Substack
• Ryan Haas: Bluesky, Substack
• “Hush Season Two: The Case of Sarah Zuber”
• Justin St. Germain, Oregon State University professor
• “Dying for a Fight”
• “In Cold Blood,” Truman Capote
• Oregon Public Broadcasting
• “Hush Season One: The State of Oregon v Jesse Lee Johnson”
• “Bundyville”
• “Twin Peaks”
• Justice for Sarah Zuber Facebook Page
• “When the Moon Turns to Blood” (Leah Sottile)
• “Blazing Eye Sees All” (Leah Sottile)
• “A Living Manifesto on Journalism in 2026 and Beyond” (Leah Sottile, December 2025)

Show Credits

Hosted and produced by Mark Armstrong
Associate producer: Marina Leigh
Episode editor: Kelly Araja
Audience editor: Adriana Lacy
Promotional support: Ellen Tuttle
Operational support: Paul Plutnicki, Peter Canova

Nieman Foundation interim curator: Henry Chu
Music: “Golden Grass,” by Blue Dot Sessions (www.sessions.blue)
Cover design by Adriana Lacy

Nieman Storyboard is presented by the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard.