Story matchmaker: Inside Story Bureau with David Wolman
A veteran journalist builds a new model for connecting great reporting with publishers and audiences.
After years of writing for major outlets like Outside and Wired, David Wolman noticed a persistent problem in journalism: writers often struggle to find the right home for exceptional stories. His solution was Story Bureau, a venture that connects works of narrative journalism with publications while facilitating their adaptation into other media formats like movies and TV. Past Story Bureau projects have appeared everywhere from Alta to Smithsonian Magazine.
For Wolman, whose own work ranges from award-winning books about Hawaiian cowboys to features on Egyptian revolutionaries, the project represents a new approach to an old challenge: ensuring quality journalism reaches audiences while creators are fairly compensated. Operating from his home base in Hawaii, he’s built Story Bureau into a bridge between writers and publishers at a time when traditional paths to publication are narrowing.
In this edition of Depth Perception, we spoke with Wolman about reimagining journalism’s business model, what makes a story worth championing, and why writers need advocates in today’s media landscape. —Parker Molloy
Tell me a bit about Story Bureau. Where did the idea come from and what gaps in the journalism industry did you identify that led to its creation?
Story Bureau began as a group of writers talking shop. We would meet up over drinks and discuss story ideas, edit each others’ pitches, and share editorial contacts. As more of those conversations also came to involve the business side, particularly contracts and TV and film adaptation, we realized there was real value in what we were doing: helping fellow writers further monetize their work, while also providing producers, studios, and streamers with premium stories that are ripe for adaptation.
How do you define what makes a story right for Story Bureau? What are you looking for?
We don’t have any hard and fast rules on this, but like anyone who knows storytelling we look for narrative tension, fleshed-out characters, and riveting scenes. An expert talking while seated behind her desk isn’t a scene.
What have Story Bureau's biggest successes looked like?
One of our favorites is Andrew Dubbins’ story about a former Marine who went undercover for the FBI. This was optioned and then promptly set up at Amazon Studios for a limited series. Julian Smith’s masterpiece about the croquet champion from rural Kentucky is another gem. That one was optioned by Skydance and we can’t wait to see what they do with it. Another hidden gem in our catalog is Laura Smith’s story about white supremacists.
What Story Bureau story surprised you the most?
Bryan Denson’s deep dive into the Earth Liberation Front, and specifically the feds’ stop-at-nothing campaign to break the group's spokesperson, surprised me quite a bit.
Scouting out a legendary tale
Wolman and Story Bureau had an important role in “The Catch,” the Webby and Mirror Award-winning profile of pioneering adventure journalist Virginia Kraft, written by outdoor and environmental journalist Emily Sohn and published by Long Lead in late 2023. Wolman first mentioned Kraft to Sohn, who then set out to understand how the avid outdoorswoman — among Sports Illustrated’s earliest hires in the 1950s — could fade into obscurity after a wild career that included hunting with royalty and dictators across six continents.
“Once I started reading about her, I became intrigued,” Sohn said in an earlier Depth Perception interview. (Scroll down past the Evan Gershkovich opener story.) “It was clear that there was also so much more to her than [her journalism], including an entirely second life as a wildly successful thoroughbred horse breeder.”
Read “The Catch” — and for a deeper dive on the feature, read and subscribe to the Long Lead newsletter.
You’ve been a contributing editor at major publications. How has that experience informed how you approach Story Bureau's relationships with outlets?
We want to be excellent partners. That means serving up amazing stories from seasoned journalists. But it also means keeping things simple. Think of it like matchmaking. Once a story is accepted, we stay out of the way so that the writer and the magazine staff can do their thing. We don’t need to insert ourselves further into a process that already has very smart people working hard to sculpt and produce something exceptional.
What led you to get into journalism?
In high school we read Joan Didion’s Slouching Towards Bethlehem and John McPhee’s Encounters With the Archdruid. Those books cemented my love for nonfiction. My mentor in college, the author and journalist Ron Powers, helped me to see that obsessively observing the world and people in it could be channeled into something resembling a career.
What story of yours are you the proudest of?
Some feel more like reporting achievements, like getting away with something that perhaps I shouldn’t have. Surviving a winter warfare training course in Finland, for instance, or sneaking onto a new railway system in China without getting arrested. But the ones I’m most proud of dig deeper into character. These are the stories that left me feeling like I’d learned something about the human experience. A few that come to mind are the story about the young men who disappeared in French Polynesia during the Covid pandemic, one about digital revolutionaries in Egypt, and one about an NSA lifer who dared to speak up to her superiors.
If time and resources were no object, what story would you most want to report out and tell to the world?
Oh man, where to begin? It doesn’t have to be a story that I write necessarily, but I’d like to see a feature about a family escaping Putin’s Russia and seeking asylum in a neighboring country. I’ve also been thinking about rare earth elements and how there must be a burgeoning black market for them. Do you know any smugglers I could talk to?
What is the best journalistic career advice you ever received?
Writing is editing. If you’re hung up on something, lower your standards and move on. You can fix it later.
What is the worst journalistic career advice you ever received?
One dollar per word is decent pay.
What makes you hopeful for the future of journalism?
I’m worried about the future of journalism in the Fourth Estate sense of the word. I’m less worried about features journalism because there will always be an appetite for incredible true stories.
Further reading and listening from David Wolman
Aloha Rodeo by David Wolman and Julian Smith (William Morrow, 2019)
“Set Adrift” (The New York Times, Nov. 28, 2022)
“The Once-Classified Tale of Juanita Moody” (Smithsonian Magazine, March 2021)
“The Man Who Chases Auroras to Push Away Darkness” (Outside, Jan. 6, 2020
“The Instigators” (The Atavist, May 2011)