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.
After 19 students and two teachers were gunned down in a classroom in Uvalde, Texas, the chorus rose: “Enough!” It came with a sad refrain: “It will happen again.” And it did. As many as 15 mass … Read more
How much difference does three days make? Too much, at least when it comes to our gnat-like attention span. Three days is the time it takes for the public to shift from outrage to resignation in response to a … Read more
If you want to see some creative short-form storytelling, you can skip right past Twitter and TikTok and head straight to the news. Newspapers, news sites, TV news — any with cred are running images of demonstrations rising up … Read more
A friend came to the house on a recent evening with all he needed in his grocery tote. He took over my kitchen and let me chatter as he made a remarkable dish: Tender pork medallions with rosemary, prunes … Read more
Stand-out journalism produced last year was honored in the release of the 2022 Pulitzer Prizes, celebrating the best of the craft and affirming the importance of serious, creative journalism in chaotic times. It’s not the first … Read more
During summers of my childhood, a highlight was the twice-monthly visit by the bookmobile. Our small village had no formal public library at the time — we weren’t blessed with one of the 1,600-plus Carnegie Libraries that … Read more
It’s that season. Not erratic spring, but the reliable roll-out of journalism awards, aka a free education in the best of this work and how it’s done. You can roll your eyes at the glut of awards given in … Read more
One of my engineer brothers often pesters me about the thicket that is the English language. Silent or paired letters that defy logic: psychic, knave, climb. Words that have letters that seem, upon consideration, extraneous: sock, aardvark. Letter combinations … Read more
A few days ago, I caught a Lyft to Sea-Tac Airport from my home in Seattle. The driver was originally from Eritrea, as are many of the taxi and share drivers I meet here. He told me he emigrated … Read more
Ah, those pesky numbers. Not, we journalists are often told, our strong suit. Or to cite the old and very lame joke: “Jourmalists don’t do math.” And yet we must, especially in an era in which numbers often drive … Read more
