The Art of Fact in the Digital Age is a showcase of the most powerful and moving journalism of the past 25 years.
Selections include stories originally published in established bastions of literary journalism (The New York Times, The Atlantic and The New Yorker), as well as those from specialized and online publications (Runner’s World, The Atavist). It features writers of extraordinary style (including Carina del Valle Schorske, Brian Phillips, and Jia Tolentino), as well as those who have profoundly influenced public discourse on the 21st century’s most urgent issues: Mitchell S. Jackson, Clint Smith, and Ta-Nehisi Coates on race; Susan Dominus and Luke Mogelson on migration; and Kathryn Schulz and David Wallace-Wells on environmental threats. It even includes one story that expanded literary journalism’s repertoire into audio (This American Life).
This collection, assembled for students, scholars, and practitioners alike, also charts the evolution of digital longform journalism through its greatest achievements, from transitioning readers to screens to the integration of multimedia with words in service of meaning. The art of fact in the 21st century opened new ranges of expression to address such issues, while uniquely bearing the imprint of their generation’s digital cultures and technologies. Although many forces compete for attention in the digital age, story triumphs. The works in this anthology show us why.
Table of Contents:
Preface
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Part I: Digital Longform Journalism Pioneers
Black Hawk Down (The Philadelphia Inquirer)
Mark Bowden
Snow Fall: The Avalanche at Tunnel Creek (New York Times Magazine)
John Branch
Leading up to 6:01: The Last 32 Hours of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (The Commercial Appeal)
Marc Perrusquia
Firestorm: The Story of the Bushfire at Dunalley (The Guardian)
Jon Henley and Laurence Topham
The Displaced (New York Times Magazine)
Susan Dominus
The Jessica Simulation: Love and Loss in the Age of A.I. (San Francisco Chronicle)
Jason Fagone
Part II: Notable Narratives
The Reckoning (Texas Monthly)
Pamela Colloff
The Bones of Marianna (Atavist Magazine)
David Kushner
After the Last Border (Viking, 2021)
Jessica Goudeau
Who is Matty Healy? (The New Yorker)
Jia Tolentino
The Out Crowd (NPR)
Emily Green
Part III: Showing and Telling
The Case for Reparations (The Atlantic)
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Bodies on the Line (The New York Times)
Carina del Valle Schorske
Twelve Minutes and a Life (Runner’s World)
Mitchell S. Jackson
Out in the Great Alone (Grantland)
Brian Phillips
Part IV: The Reporter Takes the Stage
The Mastermind (The Atavist)
Evan Ratliff
The Dream Boat (New York Times)
Luke Mogelson
My Four Months as a Private Prison Guard (Mother Jones)
Shane Bauer
Love in the Time of Robots (Wired and Epic Magazine)
Alex Mar
Part V: Confronting the Unspeakable
How the Word is Passed (Little, Brown and Company, 2021)
Clint Smith
The Really Big One (The New Yorker)
Kathryn Schulz
The Uninhabitable Earth (New York Magazine)
David Wallace-Wells
Dispatches from Ukraine (AGNI)
Tetiana Troitskaya, Olha Poliukhovych, and Iryna Slavinska
Selected Bibliography
Index
About the Author :
Jacqueline Marino is Professor in Kent State University’s School of Media and Journalism, USA. She is also a writer and a national Edward R. Murrow Award-winning audio journalist. Her articles and essays have appeared in many publications, including Cleveland Magazine and The Washington Post. She authored White Coats: Three Journeys Through an American Medical School (2012) and co-edited From Car Bombs to Cookie Tables: The Youngstown Anthology (2020), now in its second edition.
David O. Dowling is Professor in the School of Journalism & Mass Communication at the University of Iowa, USA. He is the author of ten books and numerous articles on cultural production and creative industries from print to digital media. Among his most recent books are Podcast Journalism: The Promise and Perils of Audio Reporting (forthcoming), A Delicate Aggression: Savagery and Survival in the Iowa Writers’ Workshop (2019), and Immersive Longform Storytelling: Media, Technology, Audience (2019).
Review :
In 1997, Kevin Kerrane and I published The Art of Fact: A Historical Anthology of Literary Journalism. A great deal of stellar journalism has been produced in the more than a quarter of a century since then, and The Art of Fact in the Digital Age is an outstanding compendium of the best of the best. Jaqueline Marino and David O. Dowling have wisely and judiciously selected a group of pieces that shows the remarkable range—in subject matter, approach, style, and format—of today’s standout journalists. Highly recommended for anyone who aspires to join their ranks, or merely wants to appreciate the state of the journalistic art.
Captivating, moving, breathtaking: who said textbooks can’t be page-turners? This volume heralds a new wave of literary journalism, vividly illustrating how to ‘make facts dance’ in the digital era. Along the way, a new genre is established and canonized: digital literary journalism at its best.
Jacqueline Marino and David O. Dowling’s compelling new anthology demonstrates the way literary journalism has endured and changed in the digital age. The texts highlighted here show the impact of technical innovation on the form, while confirming good writing still lies at its heart. Presented by the authors with informative introductions to the stories, the collection illustrates how successful the marriage of commanding storytelling and digital technology can be, while describing a significant new wave in literary journalism’s ongoing evolution.
Whether you are a practitioner looking to enhance your digital repertoire by seeing what others have done, or just an avid consumer of fact-based narratives, The Art of Fact in the Digital Age is sure to give you much to explore and think about.
