Document of the Day: Annotating “The Case of Jane Doe Ponytail”
If you read “The Case of Jane Doe Ponytail,” published in The New York Times in 2018, you’re likely to remember it. The award-winning story recounted the life and death of Song Yang, a Chinese woman who came to the United States with dreams of becoming an American citizen, but who ended up dying after falling from a building during a raid on the illicit massage parlor where she was employed as a sex worker.
Now you can read the story with annotations by its author Dan Barry, explaining how he crafted the heart-rending narrative. It’s an outstanding lesson in the hows and whys of narrative craft and in-depth reporting.
The annotations in red are questions asked by Nieman Storyboard; the annotations in blue are Barry’s answers.
This is how it begins:
Screenshot from Nieman Storyboard.
And, 9,500 words later, this is how it ends:
Screenshot from Nieman Storyboard.
You can find the full, annotated story on Nieman Storyboard.
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License
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