Katia Savchuk
The Information
San Francisco Bay Area, CA, United States
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Past articles by Katia:
Meet the Volunteers Cold-Calling Russians to Change their Minds about the Ukraine War
On Thursday morning, Katia Zalkind, a vice president at a medical communications firm in Chicago, dialed an unfamiliar number. A man picked up. “I’m a volunteer, and we’re calling people in Russia to answer questions about what’s going on in Ukraine,” said Zalkind, who is 48, speaking Russian. “ ... → Read More
Learning to Cook My Mother's Borscht Helped Get Me Through Quarantine
I never fully appreciated the hearty Ukrainian foods my Mother made until the pandemic took them away. → Read More
Can Guaranteed Income Help Americans Escape Poverty?
Basic income has been gaining steam in 2020. Here, the story of one single mother who received guaranteed income for a year as part of a trial program called Magnolia Mother's Trust in Jackson, MS. → Read More
The Pitch: a veteran freelancer on pitching The New York Times Magazine and more
Reporter and editor Paul Tullis has been on both sides of the pitching process. Here, he annotates his "Into the Wildfires" proposal for The New York Times Magazine. → Read More
THE PITCH: Wired's exec editor seeks stories that reveal all faces of technology
aria Streshinsky, executive editor of Wired, wouldn’t say the magazine has grown skeptical about the promise of technology. But compared to the optimism of past editorial regimes, she and editor-in-chief Nick Thompson, who took their posts in 2017, have brought in a healthy dose of scrutiny. In the past year, the magazine has covered crippling … → Read More
How a Tech Geek Is Using Machine Learning to Hold Human Rights Abusers Accountable
Patrick Ball has advised nine truth commissions, four U.N. missions, and dozens of advocacy groups in more than 30 countries. And his non-profit, the Human Rights Data Analysis Group, "represents, without a doubt, the world's top people doing statistical work on human rights violations." → Read More
THE PITCH: How to crack the code of live storytelling with Pop-Up Magazine
hen I first saw Pop-Up Magazine in San Francisco a couple of years ago, I struggled to describe the experience to friends. What do you call a show where you might watch a singer in drag pull a golf club from his cleavage, view the animated history of a man who helped pass a constitutional … → Read More
The Pitch: Erika Hayasaki on how to leave the newsroom and kill it as a freelancer
EDITOR’S NOTE: Erika Hayasaki’s conversation with Storyboard contributor Katia Savchuk explores what it took to earn a regular byline in magazines. She also shared the … → Read More
'In Here, Everyone Cries': A Jailed Immigrant's Two-Year Fight for Freedom
Virgilio Alvaro-Arcos has spent two years behind bars on the brink of deportation. A new team of public defenders is his only hope. → Read More
The Pitch: How to break into The California Sunday Magazine
Courtesy The California Sunday Magazine In just over three years of existence, The California Sunday Magazine has emerged as one of the best magazines in the country. The San Francisco-based publication has been a finalist for 10 National Magazine Awards (including for General Excellence, Reporting and Single-Topic Issue in 2018) and won three times, for design and photography. Despite the… → Read More
5 Tips for Journalists Covering Mental and Behavioral Health
Few topics are as misunderstood by the media as mental health. Despite advances in treatment paradigms, reporters too often fall back on dated stereotypes, distort … → Read More
Annotation Tuesday: Elizabeth Weil and “The Curse of the Bahia Emerald”
Elizabeth Weil, a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine and Outside, says she doesn’t write about “super important” things. But her warm and … → Read More
Notable Narrative: Jack Hitt and the birth of live-action TV news in “What Goes Up”
Jerry Foster was a daredevil helicopter pilot who helped changed the face of TV news. Photo courtesy of Epic magazine When Jack Hitt got an assignment to write about Jerry Foster, a daredevil helicopter pilot who worked for a TV station in Phoenix in the ’70s and ’80s, he thought he had a plum adventure story. It turned out to be much more – Hitt argues that Foster essentially invented… → Read More
The Pitch: How to get the attention of a senior editor at Smithsonian Magazine
As a senior editor commissioning science features for Smithsonian Magazine, Jennie Rothenberg Gritz gets tons of freelance queries. Yet few cold pitches result in an … → Read More
Vice News correspondent Elle Reeve and "Charlottesville: Race and Terror"
Elle Reeve with white nationalist Christopher Cantwell during the "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville in August Vice News The 22-minute “Vice News Tonight” documentary “Charlottesville: Race and Terror” provided a chilling look at the white supremacists behind the violent “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Va., in August. It quickly went viral. “They were really, really, really… → Read More
The Pitch: Jason Fagone on Landing “The Willy Wonka of Pot” in Grantland
Magazine pitches are an elusive species. You hear talk of them at journalism conferences and in freelancer forums. You see evidence of their existence in … → Read More
Notable Narrative: The Cincinnati Enquirer's stunning “Seven Days of Heroin”
Covington paramedics administer naloxone intravenously to Gracie Centers after she overdosed. Liz Dufour/The Cincinnati Enquirer As far as Terry DeMio knows, she’s the only journalist in the country with the title “heroin reporter.” She’s been covering the opioid epidemic for The Cincinnati Enquirer for five years, including two on the beat full time. Yet DeMio and her editors felt they needed… → Read More
Notable Narrative: The Marshall Project's Maurice Chammah and “The Accusation”
In the opening of Maurice Chammah’s story “The Accusation,” jointly published by Esquire and The Marshall Project, we meet Katie Spencer Tetz, a 25-year-old … → Read More
Annotation Tuesday! Mac McClelland and 'Delusion Is the Thing With Feathers'
Like Tippi Hedren in this photo from "The Birds," Mac McClelland didn't have a lot of fun on her birding expedition From "The Birds," by Alfred Hitchcock Mac McClelland is no stranger to risk and discomfort: This is a woman who has reported on rape in Haiti’s tent cities and genocide in Myanmar. But she didn’t expect to fear for her life when she set out to write a story about a birding… → Read More
Notable Narrative: Nicole Lucas Haimes and "Who Killed Julian Pierce?"
Illustration by Sibel Ergener/MEL magazine The article “Who Killed Julian Pierce?” was unusual on at least three counts. It was the author’s first magazine story. It took nearly 30 years to write. And it came close to solving a murder. “I thought a magazine piece would be the same as making a documentary. I couldn’t have been more wrong.” Nicole Lucas Haimes spends most of her time making… → Read More