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 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
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 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