Jacqui Banaszynski retired as the endowed Knight Chair in Editing at the Missouri School of Journalism in 2017, is editor at Nieman Storyboard, and a faculty fellow at the Poynter Institute. She won the 1988 Pulitzer Prize in feature writing for “AIDS in the Heartland,” a series about a gay farm couple facing AIDS, and was a finalist for the 1986 Pulitzer in international reporting for her account of the sub-Saharan famine.
By Jacqui Banaszynski It’s awards’ season in the journalism industry, and with that comes your free continuing education. And with it comes a chance to refresh and refocus your journalism — for free. There are plenty of award skeptics … Read more
By Jacqui Banaszynski If walls could talk, the tales whispered through the rooms of the Foreign Correspondents’ Club in Hong Kong would hold me in thrall. The club is a throwback to another time in our profession. Read more
By Jacqui Banaszynski A recent social media post from a journalist-turned-professor sparked my interest. The professor told a quick story about a student who went into an interview with trepidation (don’t we all?), and then was thrilled when the … Read more
A recent phone conversation has me thinking about construction. Not of the firewood holder waiting in the garage to be assembled (a spare Allen wrench, anyone?). I’m thinking of construction as it applies to stories. I was contacted by an … Read more
By Jacqui Banaszynski Classic news narratives tend to follow a single primary character through a story. There are other characters, of course, including people connected to the main character or more official or expert sources … Read more
By Jacqui Banaszynski Above are a couple of spring daffodils for you as the world passes the spring equinox, and the tilt of time once again shifts. I send them for no other reason than it’s spring and daffodils … Read more
By Jacqui Banaszynski I try to take notice of writing approaches in all manner of places. As a kid, I read the back of cereal boxes, which probably were promo-style or maybe kid-type stories. I read the “Green Pages” … Read more
By Jacqui Banaszynski A sign of the times… or, to be wordier but more precise, a sign of my obsessed mind in these divisive times in these dis-United States … My closest friend’s husband reads comic strips. He has … Read more
By Jacqui Banaszynski Rotten Tomatoes didn’t think much of “The Da Vinci Code,” the 2006 film adapted from Dan Brown’s best-selling novel of the same name. The movie only rated 25 percent on the Tomatometer; the Critics … Read more
By Jacqui Banaszynski Four long-time friends stopped for a lunch at an old-style diner in the rural ex-urbs of Philadelphia. We hadn’t all been together since before COVID and were fully absorbed with catching up. But we were barely … Read more