Magazine stories, the best ones anyway, are generally a combination of three elements: access, narrative, and disclosure.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Stories are different every time you tell them - they allow so many possible narratives.
While technology efficiently delivers news stories to our desktops, laptops and mobile devices, magazines are all about context - how ideas and images are presented in relation to one another and within a larger point of view.
Stories, as we're taught in journalism school early on, are told through people. Those stories make our documentaries powerful. You can explore someone's culture, you can explore their experience, you can explore an issue through human beings who are going through it.
Stories and narratives are one of the most powerful things in humanity. They're devices for dealing with the chaotic danger of existence.
The marketplace tells us that good, visceral storytelling has a place. But there are lots of questions about the format that stories take.
One of the key qualities of all stories is that they are made to be shared.
I love writing traditional magazine pieces, and especially their breadth of reporting and the deliberateness of the writing.
I tend to gravitate toward reporters who cover all aspects of the story: from personal aspects to the big picture that answer the 'so what' of a story.
Online, you have things like Slate Magazine, which has a lot of commentary and analysis of stories, so it gives you a fuller picture. I would compare that to a news magazine or the New Republic.
There are two types of stories: public and private.