Mayborn Lit Conversations

Journalist and author Steve Gamel says writing is not easy, but he has some tips on how to help us to overcome our fears and improve our writing skills.

Two-time Pulitzer Prize Winner Gene Weingarten reunites with one of his former reporters during last year's Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Conference to give a master class in narrative storytelling. You'll learn about how you tell stories about the people in your everyday life, how you bring scenes alive and why you always stay curious about the world around you.

The recently retired executive editor of the Washington Post discusses the dramatic pursuit of truth in journalism during a time when journalists are under attack. Baron talks about his passion for storytelling, highilights about his career at The Miami Herald and The Post and what's next

During the Vietnam War, 2,197 helicopter pilots and 2,717 crew members were killed. Black Cat 2-1 is the story of Bob Ford, the pilot, discusses how he wrote this compelling story about his many missions and the valiant men he served with who risked their lives for the troops on the ground. Ford flew on more than 1,000 missions when he and his men dared to protect and rescue.

Listen to Buzzfeed Investigative reporter Albert Samaha talks about how he is focused on reframing the way to tell the story of social justice in America. At the same time, he offers pro tips on how he revealed the unsafe conditions of essential workers around the country during the coronavirus pandemic. Samaha is author of Never Ran, Never Will: Boyhood and Football in a Changing American Inner City, which was a finalist for the 2019 PEN/ESPN Literary Sports Writing Award.

During this high-energy conversation, Dallas-based reporter for The Marshall Project, Cary Aspinwall is a passionate investigative reporter who admittedly spends most of her life chasing down documents and information for her stories. Listen to this Pulitzer finalist talk about Oklahoma's flawed execution process and how to questioning authority is just second nature for her. he won the Gerald Loeb Award for reporting on a Texas company's history of deadly natural gas explosions

By all accounts, it was just another typical day at the always busy Walmart in El Paso until a gunman drove from Dallas, shot and killed 23 people. Alfredo Corchado, a veteran Dallas Morning News reporter who has covered Mexico and the border for more than 20 years, discusses how he and a team of journalists, tell the stories employees, families and the community still reeling from the tragedy. Corchado, whose family lives in El Paso, also reveals the importance of having diverse reporters and editors in newsrooms to share stories that are rich with cultural understanding adn empathy.

This week I’m talking with Mike Wilson, who recently announced that he is stepping down as editor of the Dallas Morning News. Wilson spent nearly five years at the newspaper after a short stint at ESPN’s FiveThirtyEight. Before that, Wilson became a success editor at the Tampa Bay Times, and started out at the Miami Herald – where he and I crossed paths – way back in the day. Over two conversations, we discussed his love of newspapers and journalism, the challenges of leading a newsroom that was shrinking every year, the role of unions, diversity and how local journalism is changing. As Mike explains, regional papers like the Dallas Morning News can no longer remain “newsrooms of record” but are becoming “newsrooms of choice,” where editors and reporters have to make painstaking decisions everyday about publishing stories their readers care most about.

SPECIAL ELECTION EPISODE: This week we’re talking to two reporters who have spent the past 18 months or more on the campaign trail writing about politics, and particularly the 2020 Presidential Election. I had a chance to talk with Gromer Jeffers, political writer, at the Dallas Morning News and Elena Schneider, a national political reporter, for Politico. We talked about life on the campaign trail, particularly during the pandemic and how best to cover the candidates, sift through the spin to find the truth, whether we’ll have results on Election night, the future of political campaigns and covering politics in a post-pandemic world.

Journalist Jamie Thompson takes us behind the scenes one hot summer evening in Dallas when five police officers were killed. By doing some good fashioned reporting, extensive interview and poring through tens of thousands of pages of court testimonies she recounted the events of the horrific night through the eyes of witnesses. She learned a lot about her writing process and how difficult it is to write abour race, police and culture in America.

What started out as a two-year project that would chroncle the history of the much-revered Texas Rangers, turned out to be a five-year journey that exposes "a cult of glory" that reveals horrific truths. Doug J. Swanson's book rips of the veneer of that glory, showing how there history is riddled with vile massacres of Native Americans, murdering Mexicans at random and terrorizing Blacks throughout the state. Swanson is the author most recently of Blood Aces: The Wild Ride of Benny Binion, the Texas Gangster Who Created Vegas Poker. He was for many years an investigative reporter and editor at The Dallas Morning News.

Texas Monthly Editor Skip Hollandsworth reveals how he hates to write, loves to report and does as much research as possible to create rich narratives and compelling characters. You might recall that Hollandsworth's 2011 movie Bernie, which Hollandsworth co-wrote with Richard Linklater, is based on his January 1998 story, “Midnight in the Garden of East Texas.” His true crime history, The Midnight Assassin, about a series of murders that took place in Austin in 1885.

In a compelling interview, Dr. Seema Yasmin, an award-winning journalist, author , doctor and professor shares the inside scoop on the Ebola outbreak in Dallas and its eerie comparisons to coronavirus pandemic. She dives into issues about debunking myths about public health crisis, a culture of misinformation and the fragile state of our health systems in the U.S. and around the world.

George Getschow, Mayborn Literary Nonfiction founder, chats with author Hampton Sides take you on journey from the far reaches of Siberia to the South Pacific - and every place in between. As Getschow puts it, "rollicking and far ranging adventure into the soul of one of America's finest historians and literary journalists."

The Mayborn LitConversations is a podcast produced by UNT's Mayborn School of Journalism and the Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Conference, featuring conversations with journalists and authors who offer down to earth advice about reporting, writing and storytelling.