Episode 12: John Woodrow Cox
When John Woodrow Cox talked with Matt Tullis on the podcast, he was working at the Tampa Bay Times and writing short narratives. Since then, Cox joined the Washington Post, where he is an enterprise reporter who has written about a flawed sexual assault investigation in the Marines and about a 10-year-old who has HIV.\n\nAt the Times, Cox was a general assignment reporter in Pinellas County. He covered breaking news and led long-term investigations into frivolous government spending, military contract fraud and Florida\u2019s prescription pill epidemic. He also wrote feature stories, including the \u201cDispatches from Next Door\u201d series for the Floridian magazine. These stories are very short \u2014 just 500 words long \u2014 but painstakingly reported. They tell a full story in a very short amount of space.\n\nWe talked with him about two such stories, one about a woman who is only able to find peace on the ocean. The other is about a senior citizen always on the look for that special young woman who will save him from loneliness. We also talked about writing cops and crime stories and how it can help form a narrative sense.