By Jacqui Banaszynski Most of my holiday cards to people as 2023 ended came to a close were signed with this wish: Here’s to a hopeful 2024. Five days in, that hopefulness was been mightily challenged. A … Read more
By Carly Stern Imagine that you’ve reached your long-held journalism dreams. You worked your way to the staff of a big masthead newspaper. Then you moved beyond the breakneck pace and tight word-count limits of that world to the … Read more
By Jacqui Banaszynski One of my writing workshop wisdoms is bogarted from former colleague and longtime friend Katherine Lanpher. It first came to me when I was struggling to cobble together a last-minute keynote for some … Read more
By Jacqui Banaszynski In a companion piece, the bots channeled you, the Storyboard readers, to identify the top posts, by pageview, in 2023. It’s a strong list, and offers stories you can learn from again and again. Now I … Read more
By Jacqui Banaszynski My vexations with the bots are many. They read my mind when I enter the first few words — or letters — of a Google search. They track my phone to the dentist’s office and then … Read more
By Jacqui Banaszynski I am a Christmas person, without apology. I long ago left behind institutional religious practice. I no longer go big on decorations. But upbringing, culture and, mostly, the deep quite of solstice-time make it a feeling … Read more
EDITOR’S NOTE: As this Christmas weekend settles upon us, I reprise this little essay from two years ago as a Storyboard gift to all the storytellers and story readers/listeners/watchers out there. It was first posted Jan. 7, 2022, which seems … Read more
By Fern Reiss I’ve been both accepted and rejected by Nature Magazine. For the same submission. It all started when I met a bumblebee veterinarian at the UPOD Writer’s Conference this past January. Some people keep a bucket … Read more
By Jacqui Banaszynski As I indulged in my morning obsession of scanning news headlines one day last week, I paused on something called “napkin stories.” The tease I got included a reference to actor Chris Pine — a favorite … Read more
By Jacqui Banaszynski A lot of journalists dream of having their byline on work that wins one of the top industry awards. Many long to see their name on the spine of a book. Some might even fantasy about … Read more