How Kari Howard, distinguished and beloved storytelling editor, inspired magic at two great newsrooms

By Michael Williams

When she died on January 10 at the age of 59, Kari Howard, one of the leading narrative-journalism editors of her generation, left a legacy of enduring influence.

Kari was an unparalleled champion of superb writing and moving narratives. But to the reporters across the world whom she edited at Reuters News and, earlier, at the Los Angeles Times, she brought much more: growth, a broadening of horizons, and a greater sense of purpose and possibility.

“Storytelling Editor” is a title Kari and I cooked up while discussing the idea of her joining Reuters in 2017. She had another term for what she did, as she explained in this introductory email she wrote me then:

Hey there,

I was just flying through Heathrow on my way back to Maine from Madrid (a 22-hour trip involving two airplanes, two buses and one old car on a very foggy country road), and realized that I hadn’t reached out to you….

My reporters have called me “the story whisperer,” because I have a knack for finding out how a story should be told, be they investigative or human interest. I love that description.

As happens with any lede that bore Kari’s fingerprints, the reader was hooked. She came to Reuters prepared to make magic. As she summed up her CV in that email:

I’m lucky that my whole career has been filled with dream jobs: as a line editor on the L.A. Times’ foreign desk, as the editor of the Times’ longtime narrative feature, Column One, and, now, as the editor of the Nieman Foundation’s narrative site, Storyboard….

Characteristically, she omitted mention that she’d been the editor of Diana Marcum’s Pulitzer Prize-winning series of features in 2015 on the California drought at the Los Angeles Times. Seeing through her modesty, we swiped her from Storyboard. Reuters soon had an editor who infused a new sensibility into our 170-year-old newsroom. 

Renowned for being first, right and fair, Reuters is now also known for tales of love, amid plague or the wildfires of the American West (and of loathing, amid Brexit). There’s nothing niche about the heart when it comes to the news, though. Kari’s sensibility added resonance to some of our most serious work, from new areas such as data-driven reporting on climate change to traditional areas of excellence including war and conflict. Stories she edited from Myanmar and Hong Kong, for instance, were brilliantly crafted features and also essential components of our hard-edged coverage of the historic troubles that befell those places.

I can’t think of another editor with whom reporters have enjoyed working as much as they have with Kari. That’s a testament to her chops and to her character – her warmth, generosity, kooky sense of fun and her infectious love for our craft.

Kari’s passions included her horse. (“Did you know I have a horse? A beautiful Arabian. His grandsire was a world champion, in coffee table books about Arabians. He’s the happiest he’s ever been, living a true ‘Black Beauty’ kind of retirement.”)

And of course, pop music. If she edited one of your stories, she probably created a Spotify playlist for it. So she was especially delighted when the multitalented Josh Schneyer went the extra octave for a piece:

Many of you know I do soundtracks for stories, but this is the first time a reporter sent me a song he had actually WRITTEN. Never mind one as beautiful as this, by @jschney. Speechless. We'll Never Have Paris https://t.co/rF1vLht36y

She passed away at home with her mother, Diane, and her sister, Alison, by her side. As Alison said in an email, “It was a sunny, cold day in Liberty, Maine, with snow blanketing the land around her beloved farmhouse and the sun bathing her face here first thing in the morning.”

Alison continued: “She saw more beauty in the world, found more joy in everyday life, had more style and fought harder than anyone I will know …. She absolutely loved working at Reuters and helping writers pull out the personal stories within the stories that tackle the challenges the planet faces …. We love her, will treasure her in our hearts and minds every day and will keep her by our sides.”

So will the writers she inspired, to find not only the heart of the story, but also the true tenor of their voice.

Williams is global enterprise editor at Reuters

An editor who changed how we see

By Poppy McPherson

When word went around Reuters that we were hiring a Storytelling Editor, I knew this would be someone great. I didn’t imagine it would be someone extraordinary, who would change the way I work and see the world.

Walking into her house in London – a tiny Dickensian cottage hidden off Brick Lane, stylish but cozy, inhabited by someone obviously mad about music and cats – it was apparent that this was a special person. After hours “plotting” journalism, to borrow her phrasing, from her sofa, a Siamese cat glued to her lap, Kari emailed apologizing “for keeping you so long. My story enthusiasms get the better of me all the time.”

It was one of the best meetings I could remember. I left brimming with ideas and confidence – an effect she had on so many of us. She saw straight to the heart of the story and made you believe in your ability to tell it even if, really, her magical editing did most of the work. 

I will miss so much about Kari: her kind emails, filled with the colour of her days and sometimes whimsical, often profound observations about the world; the precise but fun way she used language; her generosity of spirit and dismissal of word counts (“I always prefer long!"); her empathy for the people whose stories she told (and for struggling reporters!); her infectious enthusiasm for the work. I’ll always be thankful for knowing her. Rest well, Kari.

McPherson is a special correspondent for Reuters in Myanmar

The Technicolor beauty of life

By Mari Saito

As I was struggling to write this earlier today I was reminded of the times I would message Kari to tell her that I was stuck and unable to finish a story on deadline. Smiling, she’d ask me what left the strongest impression on me from an interview or particular reporting trip. Once I was done describing it to her over the phone, I knew I had the story. 

So here are some things about Kari that left the strongest impression on me. Her exquisite taste in music, both obscure and mainstream. Her ability to reference films and quote passages of decades-old magazine articles at the drop of a hat. The way she’d say, “just try it” as she nudged me to write a story in my own distinct way. And finally, the frankness with which she would talk about loss, both big and small. 

There are so many things I will miss about Kari, but most of all, I will miss hearing her describe how the world looked to her from the inside out, with all the Technicolor beauty she so loved.

Saito is a special correspondent for Reuters in Tokyo

The Kari Playlist

Kari was known for the musical playlists she put together to match stories she edited. Her sister, Alison Howard, has compiled 59 tunes—favorites of Kari’s or works “from artists she loved or otherwise has a connection with.”

River of dreams

By Matthew Green

“I’ve got it,” Kari exclaimed. “We need to make the river the main character.”

I was working on the kind of story that only a Kari edit could do justice: A mayor in the rural English county of Somerset wanted to win for the local river, the Frome, the equivalent of legal standing for a person. The story had two elements that Kari couldn’t resist: A Quixotic battle to preserve something precious. And a town reminiscent of the fictional Sandford in the film Hot Fuzz — one of her all-time favourites.

My first draft had faltered and Kari sent me back for more reporting: “Try and get out on the water somehow.” Instead, I visited the river’s source – a sacred spring, tucked behind a Norman church. I sent a video of my daughter Matilda, then nearly two, splashing her hand in the crystal water, and Kari said she wished we could run it on Reuters.

Naturally, Kari’s instincts had been spot on: The copy began to come alive. And then – the night before we had promised the story to enterprise editor Mike Williams – I realised I had been to the source of the wrong river Frome. There are several by that name in southwest England. The pain of a hasty rewrite was leavened only by the morbid amusement Kari and I had gleaned from imagining – in lurid detail – the alternative scenario: a conference call with Mike to ask him to withdraw the story because we couldn’t read a map.

Kari later said something to me that captured how I felt about her: “You’re a dreamer. Don’t ever change.”

Green is a reporter on the Reuters enterprise team in London

Savoring every syllable

By Zeba Siddiqui

Kari’s touch lent rhythm to narratives, a gentle musicality that was so characteristic of her own personality.

By late 2018, I’d spent months reporting on the atrocities against the Rohingya when I found a young woman at a refugee camp in Bangladesh who had an inspiring story of escape and of achieving her dream of going to college. I couldn’t, however, stop thinking of her sister, who had the same dream but was unable to realize it.

Another editor might have ignored the one who didn’t make it, but Kari immediately saw that would be only half the story. That sister who was left behind became an essential part of the narrative.

In a world of black-and-white journalism, Kari strived to reflect in stories the nuance and complexities of life, elevating their truth. I’ve enjoyed reading the stories she edited as much as having her as editor.

One of my best memories of her is the way she pronounced the word “beautiful,” as Mari Saito pointed out in her Twitter tribute. I remember Kari saying the word like she savoured every syllable of it, like she savoured the beauty of life, and talking to her was to stop for a while and acknowledge that beauty too.

Her last words will always stay with me: a short message asking when we’d work together again, ending with, “Let’s find a cool story!”

Siddiqui is a political correspondent for Reuters in New Delhi

Spiritualized at the Hackney Empire

By Simon Newman

As a picture editor, I loved working with Kari. She had storytelling vision and a fine understanding of photography. Producing stories together was always a creative, collaborative, and rewarding experience. Personally, she was very supportive to me during my wife’s cancer treatment last year, sharing kind words and reassurance when we spoke. I admired the positivity she continued to show in the face of her own prognosis.

With her Anglophile knowledge of music, it was inevitable that we would often talk about the British bands we’d grown up with in the 80s and 90s. I’m so thankful now that we were able to see one of those bands together, Spiritualized, back in the pre-pandemic days of 2019. Acoustic and candle-lit and performed in the Victorian splendour of the Hackney Empire, a former London music hall, it was an exceptional gig, a great night out that we shared as music fans and friends.

Newman is a London-based photo editor for Reuters

Telling other people’s stories

By Ned Parker

Kari loved all her correspondents and made each of us feel special.

We met in 2007 while at the Los Angeles Times. She was the foreign desk’s features editor in L.A. I was a Baghdad reporter for the paper. We shared many laughs.  Her talents as an editor are legendary. Her friendship was the greatest gift.

The last time I worked with Kari was at Reuters, on a story about the struggles of wildland firefighters that ran before Thanksgiving. In mid-November, after Kari had a routine doctor’s visit that turned into a procedure, we had a brief discussion about her health. She said she had good and bad moments, and she was focused on the good ones. 

Then she shifted the conversation back to the story. That’s what she wanted.  This story wasn't easy: The subject, a wildland firefighter with PTSD, had canceled on visits, phone calls and sharing photos. With all that was going on for Kari, surely it would have been easier, even weeks earlier, to cut our losses and publish a shorter article. But she cared so deeply about people. (I can hear her voice saying upon reading an early draft, 'I like Miguel', the firefighter we were profiling). She was committed to telling people's stories vividly and fully until almost her last hour. That was her talent and her passion. She wasn’t going to squander a minute.

Several years ago, Kari shared a quote by Henry David Thoreau. "Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you've imagined."  She always did.

Parker is a New York-based reporter for Reuters

The listener and the light bulb

By Andrew R.C. Marshall

Kari’s ability to help reporters tease out and tell powerful stories was uncanny. Yet the foundations of her method were straightforward: She was a great listener who was fascinated by people and interested in almost everything. She was a story whisperer but also a story collector. I often found myself thinking, “I must tell Kari this.” And when I did, she would listen.

In January 2021, as Britain emerged from a grueling winter lockdown, I read a story about a British palliative nurse who had died of COVID after a lifetime of consoling the dying and the bereaved. “Life is like a light bulb,” the nurse had told her daughter. “One minute it's there, and then – ping! – it goes. It’s still hot, but the light starts to fade away.”

The story, and particularly that image of the lightbulb, moved me. "I must tell Kari this,” I thought, and emailed her.

“Yes, that was a wonderful image,” she replied. “As you might guess, I’ve thought a lot about death. And I think that's a good thing: My fear has faded. Not that there aren’t moments of freaking out. But mostly, I’m not afraid. And I'm strangely grateful to have had this time to face and accept it. At first it was the ceasing to exist (my thoughts, my memories – gone!) that scared me, because I’m not religious. But I’m actually OK with that too.”

Marshall is a London-based reporter for Reuters