The Art of Magazine Storytelling
Magazine journalism holds a special place in our modern media landscape that often gets overlooked. While we’re bombarded with breaking news alerts and social media updates, magazine storytelling delves deep into subjects, providing in-depth analysis, background information, and context to engage readers and offer a comprehensive view of topics that captivate audiences and provide a deeper understanding of complex issues. It’s the difference between grabbing a quick snack and sitting down to a carefully prepared meal.
The magazine profile is particularly fascinating because it allows journalists to become temporary detectives of human nature. Profiles are an open door for exploring a vast range of subjects, and what few people realize is that profiles have a secret taxonomy that can be decoded. Unlike daily news reporting, magazine storytelling grants writers the luxury of time and space to really understand their subjects.
The Digital Revolution Changes Everything
Today’s magazine storytellers work in a completely different world than their predecessors. As news outlets transition to digital publication, traditional techniques are often coupled with multimedia elements like photo, audio, video, graphics and maps to further immerse the reader in the experience, with digital long-form stories gaining popularity in the 2010s. The game-changer came with John Branch’s “Snow Fall” piece for The New York Times, which showed how technology could enhance rather than diminish great storytelling.
But here’s what’s really interesting – while much online content caters to ever-shorter attention spans, long-form stories have been making a comeback, and the reality is long-form journalism never really went away, but in today’s media landscape, it has transformed. Smart magazine editors realized they didn’t need to compete with Twitter’s speed; they needed to offer something Twitter couldn’t.
Masters of the Craft Today
The journalists leading magazine storytelling today aren’t household names like TV anchors, but they’re doing some of the most important work in media. Writers like Perri O. Blumberg have made names for themselves with contributions to outlets such as the New York Post, Wall Street Journal, and New York Times, while others like Aly Walansky have their work featured in Forbes, TODAY Show, and Food Network. These writers understand that magazine journalism is about building trust with readers over time.
Contemporary magazine journalists like Karina Hoshikawa at Refinery29 love writing about fashion, beauty, wellness and culture, while award-winning journalist Stacey Leasca’s work appears in Travel + Leisure, Food & Wine, and many others. What unites these storytellers is their ability to find the extraordinary within the ordinary.
The Recognition That Matters
While Pulitzer Prizes get all the headlines, magazine journalists have their own prestigious awards that truly matter in the industry. The BSME Talent Awards celebrate editorial excellence, best practice and groundbreaking creativity among grassroots teams across digital, print and social platforms, shining a light on the magazine industry’s rising stars and unsung heroes. These awards recognize something vital – that magazine journalism is a team sport.
The Online Journalism Awards, launched in May 2000, are the only comprehensive set of journalism prizes honoring excellence in digital journalism around the world. Recent winners show how magazine storytelling has evolved, with pieces like ProPublica’s investigation into body cameras and The New York Times Magazine’s coverage of young football players with brain injuries proving that serious magazine journalism can still change the world.
The Human Connection in Profile Writing
What separates great magazine profiles from ordinary interviews is the writer’s ability to reveal something unexpected about their subject. Some celebrated what Hollywood does best with candid profiles like Rebecca Keegan’s unbuttoned Nicole Kidman piece, while others examined areas where improvement was needed, like exploring the intersection of entertainment and politics. The best profile writers become temporary psychologists, understanding that people reveal themselves through small moments.
As one journalist explains, “I’m not like a staff writer who has status and access. But if I come up with something fun that you’ve never heard of that might connect to the larger culture, then it kind of hits a nerve and a sweet spot for me”. This captures something essential about magazine storytelling – it’s about finding the stories that matter to people but aren’t being told elsewhere.
Investigative Excellence in Magazines
Some of the most powerful journalism happening today appears in magazines, not newspapers. Recent award-winning work includes investigations into baby formula companies defended by the U.S. Government while kids paid the price, and stories about Indian companies bringing toxic industries to Africa where people are getting sick. These aren’t quick news hits – they’re deep investigations that take months to complete.
A good story of narrative journalism cannot be done at the speed of other journalistic genres, with some pieces taking about a year to complete, and journalists should choose one story and give it all the time it needs. This patience is what allows magazine journalists to uncover truths that daily news reporters simply can’t find.
The Technical Side of Great Storytelling
Long-form journalism is characterized by its extended format, allowing writers to explore topics in detail and provide nuanced perspectives, taking a more narrative approach than short news articles by immersing readers in a rich tapestry of facts, anecdotes, and analysis through extensive research, interviews, and fact-checking. But technique alone isn’t enough.
Successful journalists have learned that hard data must be linked to narrative images that help readers understand them, such as comparing illegal horse meat trafficking revenue to Queen Elizabeth II’s inheritance, because numbers don’t convey emotions. This is the art of making complex information accessible and emotionally resonant.
The Rising Stars and Established Voices
Maggie Haberman, a White House correspondent for The New York Times, became especially well-known for her thorough coverage of Donald Trump’s presidency. Widely recognized as one of the most accomplished political reporters, she is celebrated for her extensive network of sources and her ability to break major news stories. She embodies the evolution of magazine-style political journalism.
Fareed Zakaria hosts CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria GPS” and writes for The Washington Post, beginning his career as managing editor of Foreign Affairs and becoming a prominent international affairs commentator, with his show and columns providing in-depth analysis of global events that has established him as a leading voice in global journalism. These journalists show how magazine thinking can influence all forms of media.
The International Perspective
Innovative collaboration represents the principal response among independent journalists to rising authoritarianism, with the Latin American Center for Investigative Journalism facilitating impactful accountability stories in collaboration with nearly 100 media partners across Latin America and beyond. Magazine journalism works best when it crosses borders and brings global perspectives to local audiences.
Chinese journalist Hu Shuli is currently editor-in-chief of Caixin Media, which she founded in 2009, and was previously chief reporter and international editor before founding business and finance magazine Caijing, listed among the Top 100 Influential People by Time magazine and known for investigative work on fraud and corruption. International magazine journalism often faces greater challenges but can have enormous impact.
The Business of Magazine Storytelling
As publishers struggle to define their audiences and build sustainable monetization models, multimedia long-form journalism may be the answer, but it requires significant investment of time and money as publishers know it’s increasingly important to find new revenue streams and ways to capture more audience attention. The economics of magazine journalism have never been more challenging.
For 15 years, platforms like Longreads have published and curated the best longform writing on the web and wouldn’t exist without reader support, sending daily editorial picks to 100,000 newsletter subscribers who don’t want to miss stories everyone is talking about. The audience for quality magazine journalism still exists – it just needs to be cultivated differently.
The Future of Magazine Storytelling
“Hiroshima” author John Hersey was one of the earliest journalists to use narrative writing techniques of fiction for journalism to allow “readers to witness history,” but well-written pieces like the Guardian’s work on child labor go beyond bearing witness to provoke reader empathy, and this is why quality magazine work matters because change begins with seeing and hearing others whose reality is often far removed from ours. The best magazine journalism doesn’t just inform – it transforms.
Journalists continuously harness the power of technology and innovation to disseminate information, with their impact transcending traditional media platforms as many leverage social media and digital channels to engage broader audiences, redefining boundaries of investigative reporting and inspiring a new generation to pursue truth, justice, and transparency. The tools change, but the mission remains constant.
Magazine storytelling represents journalism at its finest – patient, thorough, and deeply human. These writers don’t just report what happened; they help us understand why it matters and how it connects to our own lives. In an age of information overload, they remind us that some stories are worth taking the time to tell properly. What would our understanding of the world be like if we only had headlines and never had the deeper stories that help us make sense of it all?
