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 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
By Jacqui Banaszynski We received a lot of thumbs-up in response to the two-part post (November 2023) featuring nonfiction author Kim Cross. Our pieces featured an interview with Cross about how she landed a contract for … Read more
By Jacqui Banaszynski One way I suss out my interest in a book is to read the blurbs from book reviewers and other writers. I note what people say about a book to determine if it suits my reading … Read more
By Jacqui Banaszynski A bit of awe and wonder came my way last week from a riff on awe and wonder from the Los Angeles Times morning newsletter. I subscribe to the L.A. Times, which I have followed since … Read more
By Jacqui Banaszynski There is a standard play in ice hockey known as a “deke.” I don’t usually link to Wikipedia as a primary source, but in this case it will service just fine. According to … Read more