Month: November 2025 (Page 4 of 6)

One morning in mid-December, Syrian soldiers knocked on the door of a house in eastern Aleppo. A man who hadn’t stepped outside in four and a half years opened the door. That’s how Aleppo After the Fall begins. From that initial moment, the whole story unfolds in a way that centers the lived experiences of those on the ground. Robert Worth, the journalist who wrote this piece, doesn’t use many official sources or expert interviews. Instead, he builds a vivid description of Aleppo and the ongoing conflict in Syria through individual voices and scenes that help create a narrative. The structure of the piece almost mirrors how a conversation would unfold: in pieces, one at a time.

Additionally, by framing the piece in the way that he does, the reader is able to see that the story is not just about the Assad regime or the rebels fighting to stop it. It is a story framed by the lived experiences of ordinary citizens who must rebuild their lives every time conflict erupts. By the end of the piece, readers are able to see that the narratives surrounding the war were much murkier than any one person or perspective is able to explain.

Furthermore, the author started with the aftermath immediately and deviated from a structure that dramatically takes the reader from the before to the after. In my opinion, this was crucial in helping frame the overall piece. The non-linear structure of the article in general and its almost fragmented nature also helps guide the story along. Minimal intervention by the author also lends the story more legitimacy. The context that is provided to the reader only includes the necessary information they would need to assess the credibility of the people the writer interviewed. This gives space for ambiguity that resists framing either side as being in the right, something that left me feeling disoriented at times.

In contrast, the Time article on AI Warfare, captures the story from afar. The human figures behind the warfare being described are almost invisible. The story thus doesn’t necessarily have a main character. Instead, the story relies on experts to frame the discussion and provide analysis on new developments. This choice helps provide the piece with the credibility needed to discuss a groundbreaking technological system. In many ways, by framing the piece in the manner that she does, Yasmeen Serhan is able to show just how far removed modern warfare has become from human decision-making. Her piece seems to purposely be detached rather than personal. Unlike the other stories, I wasn’t immersed in an emotional narrative. Rather, I was compelled to confront the practical realities of what AI means for warfare.

Finally, in The Case of Jane Doe Ponytail, the frame shifts to a single shapeless human being at the start of the story. It tells the tragic story of Song Yang in reverse, starting first with her tragic fall off a balcony. A number of things stood out to me in this piece. First, the setting of the story, similar to Worth’s piece, helps ground the reader in a specific place and reality. Second, the writers end the piece in a way that underscores the humanity and daily struggles faced by countless vulnerable women like Song Yang. By writing the piece in the manner they did, Barry and Singer, wrote a piece that is truly remarkable in what it is able to make the reader feel.

TIME’s article about Israel’s Use of AI in Gaza is heavy on quotes. The piece relies on experts to explain Israel’s mounting reliance on AI to locate and suggest targets, and the humanitarian implication of this trend. While the article lacks a central character, expert opinions coalesce to form a daunting picture of warfare’s future. The author writes that, according to experts, drones “are not yet fully autonomous,” suggesting that soon, if international law doesn’t implement guardrails, drones may target and kill with no human in the loop. 

Though Serhan relies more on expert opinion than narrative detail, she manages to connect to readers through a deft balance of familiarity and distance. From the start, she implores readers to recall images they’ve seen (“AI warfare may conjure up images of killer robots and autonomous drones”), creating a target of contradiction for what’s to follow (“a different reality is unfolding in the Gaza strip”). Not only does this set-up allow readers to feel grounded in their imaginations, but it also creates suspense. Serhan primes readers to anticipate surprise. In this piece, what McPhee defines as “frame of reference” is the summation of images and news items covering the war in Gaza, and the role of drones in this conflict, that the reader has consumed. 

In both Robert Worth’s feature about Aleppo after the rebels’ siege of the city and Dan Barry’s piece on Song Yang, setting is a central frame of reference. Both writers contribute their own observations of place to a broader story which, in each case, is largely about a set of characters’ evolving relationship with that setting, the passage of time, and death. 

Barry and Singer’s piece is, no doubt, immersive. I was moved by the story behind it: Barry read a headline, it made him mad, so he decided to learn more. The story he and Singer follow is an investigation into the dead woman’s life, circumstances, neighborhood, and the women who continue to toil under the exploitative conditions she underwent. 

This story is most successful when its frame of reference is consistent. About halfway through the narrative, Barry zeroes in on 40th road. Readers learn more about the aftermath of Song Yang’s death. Her mother’s grief and brother’s conspiracies are central plot lines. This focus–on the family’s and neighborhood’s reaction to Song Yang’s death in Flushing–recreated a textured world, making Song Yang’s absence all the more apparent. 

When the narrative jumped around, in time and setting, I lost interest. Song Yang is nowhere near as multidimensional a character in the story as her brother. The ongoing action of her brother’s investigation into her death draws the reader in. And the reporter benefits from observing him in action. While the history of Song Yang is compelling, it lacks depth in writing. Further, anecdotes from her childhood are interwoven with details about her life in Flushing, and I found these transitions disorienting. If anything, the successes and shortcomings of this piece underscored the reliability of chronology as an immersive tool.

My article will be focused on how racism and anti-immigration rhetoric from far-right politics, particularly Germany’s AfD party, is playing a role in the stands and field of football clubs across the country. The article will begin with speaking on the popularity of the sport within Germany, and then transition into speaking on the role of a club’s political beliefs and reputation, and how this is oftentimes shaped by the fans.  I will then speak on the recent influx of reports that the fan scene even at the more liberal clubs is becoming more conservative, and how this has prompted protests condemning AFD and right-wing extremism. Most importantly, I will include interviews from football journalists, and people who work inside the club who have seen these changes occur in real time. 

The people I met in Berlin will become characters in my story, including the social worker who I wrote my profile on. Additionally, I hope to talk more with a player who comes from an immigrant background about their experiences with the fans, and how it affects them during their time on and off the field. As well as what they think football clubs can do better to protect their players and make the sport more inclusive, particularly towards immigrants. I have not locked down a particular player yet, but I hope to include at least one player in this article. I haven’t found that IT character as I stated in class, so at the moment I have been trying to figure out another angle of the story that still gets at the heart of sports and migration. 

I will be including video evidence of some of the chants fans have utilized in the stadium that take aim at a particular ethnic or religious identity. I additionally hope to speak to ROOTS Against Racism In Sports, a German based organization that focuses on providing guidance towards professional athletes that are negatively impacted by racism in sport. As well as one of the AfD members currently sitting on the German parliament’s committee for Sports and Volunteering who I have previously reached out to, and Ozgur Ozvatan who was a former youth national team player for Germany, works for the Berlin football association, and has done research on sports and migration following his soccer career.

In writing a story, every journalist has to answer the following questions: what happened and/or what’s going to happen. Some articles are straightforward to write, however in my experience it has often been the opposite, where constant digging for more information and analysis is required. Now once all of that is completed, what do you do with it? This is where the role of structure comes into play as discussed in John McPhee’s New Yorker piece and Rob Rosenthal’s article. I found McPhee’s description of structure somewhat difficult to understand. The man is so experienced that I felt that I was reading a chapter of his memoir rather than a ‘hey everyone here are tips to help you lay out a story.’

 I felt the opposite way about Rosenthal’s use of napkin to represent the various ways you can structure a story. As I was reading it, his use of “the e” in which you begin with the present, leave the present, and then return back to it closer to the end made me recall the process in writing the profile last week. Especially when Deb told the class that many of us had our best quotes and analysis at the bottom of our stories and to move it up. Or when Raphi told me to share more on the background of the person who I profiled.

Similar to Miriam, I believe that reporting should come first, and the structure should be taken into account once the piece is initially composed. I think if these priorities are swapped then what happens is you focus more on aesthetics of the content, rather than the content itself, something Fred Abrahams warned against in the War and Truth conversation. 

Rosenthal comes from a more radio background whereas McPhee is more narrative nonfiction and print based. Given their different mediums of journalism, I would be curious to hear what structure of the 5 Rosenthal presents McPhee would think is the most helpful in writing for print. So much about telling a story is about the little things, not just getting the main and/or supporting characters, context, and then what to do next. Which quote is the strongest? Where should it go? These are the questions I have had to ask myself many times, and I felt validated reading about how McPhee has often had similar experiences.

Structure is critical because it represents how much time and dedication a journalist puts into taking “mess” and shaping it into something beautiful. However, arguably it has greater implications for the person, place, or thing being written about. It can either provide control, approval, comfortability, etc. Or it can take that away.

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Berlin has become home to a fragmented but resilient community of exiled Russian journalists. Scattered across the city, they are trying to rebuild a profession in conditions that blur work and survival.

Among them is Anastasia Korotkova, who left after her outlet TV Rain was labeled a “foreign agent.” She now works in Berlin alongside other displaced media professionals, trying to maintain a connection to an audience back home that can barely access their work. Ekaterina Fomina, once an investigative correspondent for Important Stories, fled after releasing an interview in which a Russian soldier confessed to war crimes: she continues reporting from abroad despite an 8-year sentence awaiting for her in Russia, and the distance forces her to rely on a web of anonymous sources and encrypted messages. Danila Bedyaev, formerly a local radio host in Yaroslavl, now helps coordinate practical support for others through the MiCT Exile Media Hub, where displaced journalists share workspace, training, and grants.

The piece explores how exile reshapes not only their journalism but also their sense of self. Based in Berlin, they work to preserve networks inside Russia that remain irreplaceable sources of information, all while navigating Germany’s slow bureaucracy and the constant awareness that someone could be watching. Putin’s regime has reached deep into Europe before, and nowhere feels entirely safe.

Rather than portraying exile as a single political statement, the story approaches the unique case of journalists as a daily practice of endurance, mutual help, and stubborn professionalism. These reporters no longer define themselves by access to Russia, but by the act of continuing to publish despite it. In Berlin, they start their days with headlines from a country that no longer wants them, and end them hoping someone back home is still reading.

My article will be focused around how Germany’s AfD party is recruiting young white men. The article will start from the beginnings of the AfD party, their rise to power, political factors that influence demographic support, and finally the youth movement. A majority of the information for the context of this article has come from various interviews prior to the Berlin trip. Most importantly, I will include interviews from AfD politicians and those who have seen this rise affect their lives. The people I met in Berlin will become characters in my story, including the young AfD social media activist who I wrote my profile about. Additionally, I hope to talk more with a Freie student about her experiences with the AfD party and how it is affecting her younger brother who has been leaning more and more to the right. Since he has not yet agreed to an interview, I can’t say for sure this will be my main story line.

Because I haven’t finalized a main character for this story, I have been brainstorming more ideas to find the through line. One of my interviewees mentioned that she was an intern at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, which focuses on extremism in social media. In addition to this organization, I will be including some evidence from videos posted by social media influencers to serve as direct evidence. Another method for contacting sources will be to directly message people who liked or commented on these types of post. 

I also would be interested in comparing the movement in Germany to the rightward shift more broadly across Europe and in the US. The main AfD politician who I will be including in the story has posted on his Instagram a selfie wearing a MAGA hat. Another aspect that I also want to include, but am not yet sure where it should go, is opinion that many hold that the democrats did not do a good job in their messaging in the past few decades, and are partially at fault for this movement.

This week’s focus on structure reminded me of Joshua Yaffa’s comments on the difference between top-down and bottom-up reporting. The pieces this week show us that we might think about the two styles of reporting as applicable to styles of structure in the resulting piece. Colloff’s piece on Skalnik follows a structure that makes it seem like it is a bottom-up story: through Skalnik’s exploits, we can get a glimpse of the broader problem of snitches in court trials. We spend virtually the entire story with Skalnik, the victims he prays upon, and the way that judges respond to his statements in court. I’m a little astounded at the sheer number of twists and turns in his life, and he seems like the perfect character for the story. Only in a couple of paragraphs and one or two sections do we read about how Skalnik is emblematic of a broader problem in the criminal legal system. In this sense, I would argue that it is a bottom-up story: the story stays close to him, and only occasionally zooms out. Whether or not the reporting process turned out to be bottom-up or top-down could go either way (to Colloff’s credit, I think, because it makes her storytelling feel more organic): the fact that Skalnik was mainly active in the 20th century, and the piece was written in 2019, suggests that Colloff may have been looking for a story to narrate the issue of snitching in courts, but on the other hand, the Dailey case’s recent developments may have prompted her to look into the longer backstory. In the end, I posit that the former seems more likely, as the moments where Colloff zooms out are backed up by relatively less extensive reporting.

By contrast, Schulz’s piece on The Really Big One is structured in a very top-down way: the piece is about an earthquake, and characters slot in every now and then between hand-based demonstrations of how subduction zones work or extremely vivid descriptions of the catastrophe that would ensue if an earthquake emerged from the Cascadia zone. They are merely one way of dramatizing the geologic story Schulz wants to tell. I suppose this makes sense: if your main “character” is an earthquake, it’s a little hard to ask it about its life.

The McPhee and Stewart pieces on structure seemed suited for the formats they were written for. McPhee jumps in and out of chronology, weaving in flashbacks and fast-forwards at every opportunity, though following a generally chronological pathway. By contrast, Stewart cautions against too many shifts in point of view or time period, presumably because the type of audio journalism he was writing for had less time to tell a story (in, say, a “This American Life” duration). A documentary like In the Dark shows you can get away with a lot more temporal flexibility with longform reporting, similar to McPhee’s work. I generally side with a more McPhee-style approach given my preference for longform reporting, but I see how Stewart’s piece may be useful when writing shorter-from content. Though when comparing the two styles of piece I much preferred Stewart’s, due to his mostly direct, informative approach. In this case, the information within McPhee’s showing and telling—his somewhat sprawling, narrative account—didn’t seem to warrant the length of the piece as a whole. Although perhaps that’s because I’m a Zoomer with no attention span.

The key theme that I took away from the readings this week is that there is no “one size fits all” for journalism. This was especially communicated in the Rosenthal article with different napkin drawings, and how varied the designs were. It also demonstrates the more abstract thought that goes into a piece, with dips and gradients representing how a reader could be feeling, not necessarily the specific words that they are receiving. 

I found the New Yorker piece by John McPhee especially impactful for my own reporting right now. It is hard to believe that an author, after having published many successful works, still feels so unsure about their own abilities when starting a new assignment. It almost gives me a little more confidence, knowing that even the best of the best can struggle with issues like writer’s block and an overall confusion with the amount of information that must go into a piece. I liked the quote that “you’re last one is not going to write your next one,” because it speaks to the shifting nature of journalism. Every story is unique to the characters, and just as your content is varied, so must be the structure. 

The feeling McPhee described, not knowing how to structure a story after having collected interviews and research, feels somewhat like my current position, though on a very different scale. Now that we have returned from Germany and I have enough content to fill more than enough pages, I am struggling to find the through-line for my piece. McPhee wrote the perfect metaphor for this moment, it is like returning from the grocery store, and setting all the materials out on the table. The biggest challenge and asset is the main character. As McPhee described, once he figured out who was going to tell the story, the rest came to him much more easily. Notecards of information fell into place, almost like a giant puzzle knowing which cards needed to be touching, close, or sequential, fitting them all together for the final structure of the article.

 The last piece by Stewart gave strong general tips for using chronological order in any article. Oftentimes when I am writing my own stories, it makes the most sense to lay every detail on a timeline just to get a better sense of the story before I begin writing. I liked how this article discussed elements that never really need to be in chronological order, like background info or small events outside the script. This is because a story that is scene driven has specific elements that are the most important and other details can be worked in where relevant. There was also a strong emphasis on how a writer is shifting to be inside different characters’ minds, and to be intentional in how this tool is being used.

How the AfD Plans to Win Berlin

“At the moment, almost every German is saying that Berlin is a shithole: There are too many crimes, there is too much trash on the street, drug addicts at the train stations, and so on,” Martin Kohler told me as he sipped a cappuccino in the basement café of Berlin’s state assembly building. Kohler, a tall, white man with round glasses and a cheerful demeanor that contrasts with his alarmist words, is an up-and-comer in Germany’s far-right party, Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). Currently the chair of a local AfD faction in Berlin, Kohler also used to head the state’s Young AfD group before it was labeled a right-wing extremist group by the German government and subsequently dissolved.

To Kohler, Berlin is the clearest example of what happens when the left is allowed to govern: it is a city dominated by the left wing, full of immigrants, and restrictive of the free market. But where far-right politicians in other countries may consider their capital cities a lost cause electorally and symbolically, Kohler takes a different view. “As a patriot,” he said. “If you give up the capital city, you can give up the whole project of getting in power and conquering your country back.”

The AfD has been gathering momentum across Germany. During the 2025 federal elections, it won second place nationwide, receiving 20.8% of the vote. The party is gaining in the east, with polls finding that if an election were held today in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt, AfD would earn a record 40% of the vote. 

But the party has struggled to bring its success to the nation’s capital, where a center-right SPD/CDU coalition is in power, a large left-wing bloc wields influence, and people are skeptical of the AfD’s restrictive approach to migration. Because of these factors, the party is a marginal force in Berlin’s state politics. It only holds 10 percent of seats in the Berlin House of Representatives. The regional government has set up a “firewall” to block it from performing basic functions, from serving in committees to relegating its federal offices to the farthest office building from the Bundestag. It has been plagued by a history of infighting and incompetence that one former member characterized as “unambitious mediocrity and opportunistic indifference.” 

If AfD plans to earn the right to call itself a national movement, it needs to make ground in Berlin. For my final project, I intend to write about how they plan to adapt to Berlin’s local particularities as they prepare for the 2026 Berlin State elections. Will people like Kohler try to court voters on the left that are concerned with the AfD’s hardline policies and connections with extremist groups, or will they stick to a more sympathetic right-wing base? How will they adapt their anti-immigration agenda to a voter base in which nearly 40% of citizens have a migrant background? Answering these questions will shed light on AfD’s capacity to “detoxify” its image, as well as its chances of successfully carrying out its anti-migrant policies. 

To write this story, I hope to build on the interviews I conducted with AfD state politicians and party representatives, especially those who represent or come from districts with large communities of people with migrant backgrounds. I plan to talk with political scientists who are analyzing AfD’s strategies and ask them about their thoughts on the chances of AfD gaining ground in Berlin. I also seek to learn from social media influencers who have boosted AfD’s popularity among youth voters. Finally, I hope to contact representatives from other parties in Berlin to learn about how they are responding to AfD’s success (or lack thereof) in the district.

At a cafe in Frankfurt on October 12th, 2025, Nazira Khairzad, former goalkeeper for Afghanistan’s national women’s team, put her provisional ID on the table and flipped to the portrait page. A red line ran diagonal through her biometric data. Across the top, “Exclusion of deportation (Duldung)” was written in German, and under that, “No residence permit! The holder is required to leave the country!” Since joining her sister in Germany in 2023, Nazira has been searching for a way to stay. Under “duldung” or “toleration,” a status unique to Germany, her deportation order is on hold–but only for as long as the German government deems it necessary. 

“It was not my choice to come to Germany,” Nazira had told me a week earlier, calling from her home in Neuberg, where she lives with her parents and two brothers. When the Taliban took over her country in August of 2021, she fled to Italy, risking persecution as a female athlete. When her sister, Nazima Khairzad, who made a name for herself summiting mountains and dominating ski challenges, was hospitalized with a brain tumor in Frankfurt, Nazira packed up her life again. Today, Nazira is the only one in her family without asylum in Germany. “They can send police and they can send me back to Italy,” she told me. “It happened for some people I know.” 

I plan to write a 2500-word feature story following Nazira’s relentless efforts to play sports professionally, learn German, and adjust to a new culture, despite her precarious legal status. Nazira’s path fits into a broader narrative about the German government’s recent attempts to block the arrival and integration of Afghans. After the German government set up a program to admit vulnerable Afghans in late 2022, Chancellor Merz has reversed his country’s course, putting Afghan men convicted of crimes on flights back to Afghanistan and announcing plans to deport many others. Meanwhile, Merz has offered Taliban officials consular positions, threatening to legitimize the very regime that forced Nazira to flee. 

This piece, which I am still reporting, will foreground Nazira’s search for stability in Germany against the broader context of the country’s mounting rejection of Afghans. I will speak to asylum lawyers in Germany, scholars familiar with the specifics of duldung, and people relevant to Nazira’s story, including her lawyer, sister, parents, and teammates on FC Mittelbuchen.