Thomas French, 40, has been a reporter at the St. Petersburg Times for the past seventeen years. Over the past decade, he has been assigned primarily as a projects reporter, specializing in book-length narratives that are published in the newspaper one chapter at a time. These narratives, which challenge conventional definitions about the nature and limits of newspaper pieces, combine lengthy periods of immersion reporting with serialized story-telling techniques. The projects have included "A Cry in the Night," which chronicles a murder case in Gulfport, Florida; "South of Heaven," which follows several students through one year at one Florida high school; and Babyland, which profiles two teen mothers from their childhood through their pregnancies and into their struggles as parents. "A Cry in the Night" and "South of Heaven" were both later published as books.