Art of Fact in the Digital Age

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).

• PrefaceAcknowledgementsIntroduction Part I: Digital Longform Journalism PioneersBlack Hawk Down (The Philadelphia Inquirer)Mark BowdenSnow Fall: The Avalanche at Tunnel Creek (New York Times Magazine)John BranchLeading 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 TophamThe Displaced (New York Times Magazine)Susan DominusThe Jessica Simulation: Love and Loss in the Age of A.I. (San Francisco Chronicle)Jason FagonePart II: Notable NarrativesThe Reckoning (Texas Monthly)Pamela ColloffThe 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 TellingThe Case for Reparations (The Atlantic)Ta-Nehisi Coates Bodies on the Line (The New York Times)Carina del Valle SchorskeTwelve Minutes and a Life (Runner’s World)Mitchell S. Jackson Out in the Great Alone (Grantland)Brian PhillipsPart IV: The Reporter Takes the StageThe 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 UnspeakableHow the Word is Passed (Little, Brown and Company, 2021)Clint Smith The Really Big One (The New Yorker)Kathryn SchulzThe Uninhabitable Earth (New York Magazine)David Wallace-WellsDispatches from Ukraine (AGNI)Tetiana Troitskaya, Olha Poliukhovych, and Iryna Slavinska Selected BibliographyIndex

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.