We asked via Twitter for suggestions of documentary art websites to include on our virtual newsstand (left). V.V. Ganeshananthan, a novelist (Love Marriage) and journalist, suggests two great sites combining photo, text, and in some cases, audio: Cowbird, a platform open to everybody and all the better for that; and i am, "portraits of Sri Lanka's elders in sound and image." Don't know much about Sri Lanka? You don't have to. i am is a simple but superb example of the democratic documentary possibilities opened up by the internet. Check it out.

"A 'beautiful image' can very well be the worst thing that can happen to a scene."

49 more rules for filmmakers, many of them applicable to writers and editors, from the great Wim Wenders, here.

Here's a common response I get from friends and fellow writers who read 40 Towns: "Well, to be honest, I thought it was going to be, you know, 'Look at the poors.' But it's not!" 

Of course, in some cases, it is. There are poor people depicted on 40 Towns because there are poor people in these 40 towns. They're neither more noble nor more abased. The main difference between these poor people and other people is that they have less money and fewer resources. That's about it. They're not out of Charles Dickens, they're in the Upper Valley.

What many readers expected -- or feared -- is poverty porn. Cheap thrills and empty indignation stoked by decontextualized images of poor people. Poor people as exotics. Poor people as either saintlier or more sordid than other people. That is, poor people as props for the privileged viewer.

Here's an excellent example: Jalopnik's excellent guide turning Detroit's bankruptcy crisis into your very own poverty porn documentary, "Batten Down the Hatches, The Next Storm of Detroit Documentaries is Night."

--Jeff Sharlet

It's nice to be appreciated at home.

Dartmouth Now, an official publication of the college, gives 40 Towns lots of ink in "New Website is Showcase for Literary Journalism Students", along with a terrific photo of our staff poring over maps of the Upper Valley.

Dartbeat, the blog of The Dartmouth, provides another take, by student writer Margarette Nelson.

And Dartblog, a widely-read independent daily publication, sings our praises, too.

Last but not least, Dan Fagin, a Dartmouth alumn and parent -- and a professor of science journalism at NYU as well as author of the recent Toms River: A Story of Science and Salvation -- gives us a little twitter love:  "Congratulations to @JeffSharlet and all the writers at @40Towns. Some really fine work here, worth your attention. http://www.40towns.com/" 

Literary nonfiction is an art of collage and has been ever since the earliest essays, collections of fragments. Which is what Twitter is all about. Some writers -- and some students, emulating their elders -- dismiss Twitter as trivial, but the truth is there are more interesting (and more democratic) conversations about writing occurring there than at the National Arts Club and the Yaddo dinner table combined. Sometimes they're dialogues, sometimes they're arguments, and sometimes they're what follows, Twitter's special form -- the rant, in intervals. This one's from a veteran sports writer, another kind of literary journalist. (click on the link to follow his Twitterings.) To read the rant, start at the bottom and scroll up.
--Jeff Sharlet

I've pointed out before that 12 of the 14 contributors to the first issue of 40 Towns are women -- a ratio almost exactly opposite to that of mainstream magazines that publish reported essays. That's not evidence of affirmative action on our part. It's simply a reflection of who's writing great literary journalism at the college level. So what happens to these talented writers? Why don't we see more of them publishing? Rising star literary journalist Sarah Menkedick, a cofounder of Vela -- literary journalism by women -- provides some clues:

"This past fall, I went with seven other third-year nonfiction MFA students from the University of Pittsburgh to New York to pitch editors and agents. Incidentally, we are all women. All young women. Not a single one of us was pitching a memoir or personal essay: one of us was writing a biography of Alexander Graham Bell, one a true crime story about a coal town murder, one immersion journalism about gay square dancing, one narrative nonfiction about a highway in Peru and its impacts, one a profile of a small-town filmmaker, and finally, in my case, literary journalism about Mexican migrants returning to Mexico after years in the U.S.

"We would sit around a table in a Midtown office with a generous view, and we’d each give our prepared pitch–Peru; Mexico; Alexander Graham Bell; Henry Ford and square dancing; Braddock, PA. And then the listener would sit back, digest, and say,: 'So, this is a story about a young girl…''

Read more of "It's Not Personal." If you're a woman writing literary journalism, this is required reading. If you're a man writing literary journalism, this is doubly required reading. And if you're an editor, memorize it.

--Jeff Sharlet

"Man, to write like this at 18." The not-so-bad-for-35 Jason Fagone, author of Ingenious and Horsemen of the Esophagus, and contributing editor for Wired, on Stephanie Ng's "Opportunity Cost."

Literary journalism has roots in sports writing. Not its wonkery but its commitment to evocation, its attempt to recreate for readers what it felt like to see the game, or even to be in it.

Now, writes Chris Suellentrop in the NYT, a different kind of sports writing is approaching the same challenge from a different direction:

"What sports games have accomplished since the blips in Pong’s electronic rendition of table tennis is remarkable. They are now the closest thing in the medium of video games to nonfiction storytelling.... The largest pleasure they bring is the opportunity to blur the line between nonfiction and fiction..."

Read more.

Since I began teaching at Dartmouth, I've been wondering why more Dartmouth students don't make new publications. There's no more interesting way to begin a writing life. Or, at least, it beats fetching coffee for old hacks anxious about their place in the withering establishment media, or digging through a slush pile at a literary journal that never wanted to be read in the first place.

So I was delighted when I came across American Circus, a new online magazine of reported essays and narrative criticism, created by two 2011 Dartmouth grads, Jamie Berk and Mostafa Heddaya. And even more thrilled to discover that it's good. Not "good-for-the-stage-they're-at"; just good. And sharp-toothed. Like so many young contenders, they began by taking shots at establishment hipsters. Some, like Berk's attack on their predecessor in the genre, n+1, missed the target. Others, such as Heddaya's account of the let-them-eat-cake crowd's response to Hurricane Sandy, are knockouts. Heddaya's "Down and Out in Miami Beach," a gonzo take on Art Basel simmering with clever anger, is also worth reading. 

But American Circus really made a name for itself with Berk's reported essay on doping at the Kentucky Derby, "Whispers in the Shade of Roses." (Titling isn't their strong suit.) Now Berk returns to the races with "Tracks That Burn." 

--Jeff Sharlet

"Above All, Make No Mention of Mysticism" -- Madison Pauly's gently skeptical account of submitting herself for experiments in energy healing -- made the cut today with experts in skepticism behind the Center for Inquiry's "Morning Heresy" blog.