The Art of Fact in the Digital Age is a showcase of the most powerful and moving journalism of the past 25 years. Selections include stories originally published in established bastions of literary journalism (The New York Times, The Atlantic and The New Yorker), as well as those from specialized and online publications (Runner’s World, The Atavist). It features writers of extraordinary style (including Carina del Valle Schorske, Brian Phillips, and Jia Tolentino), as well as those who have profoundly influenced public discourse on the 21st century’s most urgent issues: Mitchell S. Jackson, Clint Smith, and Ta-Nehisi Coates on race; Susan Dominus and Luke Mogelson on migration; and Kathryn Schulz and David Wallace-Wells on environmental threats. It even includes one story that expanded literary journalism’s repertoire into audio (This American Life). This collection, assembled for students, scholars, and practitioners alike, also charts the evolution of digital longform journalism through its greatest achievements, from transitioning readers to screens to the integration of multimedia with words in service of meaning. The art of fact in the 21st century opened new ranges of expression to address such issues, while uniquely bearing the imprint of their generation’s digital cultures and technologies. Although many forces compete for attention in the digital age, story triumphs. The works in this anthology show us why.
