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.
They are no longer novel, these personal stories the front lines of the coronavirus. Reporters are barred from the kind of immersion that allows eye-witness accounts from that expanding front. We can interview people who are at the heart … Read more
A friend reached out this past week, asking if I would chat with a friend of his. The second friend — I’ll call her J — runs a non-profit news organization on the West Coast. It was barely a … Read more
When I came across this line, it was in a recent interview between Esquire politics blogger Charles P. Pierce and U.S. Senator Angus King, an Independent from Maine who caucuses with Democrats. The context, of … Read more
EDITOR’S NOTE: The New York Times found the story of the savior of The Mountain Messenger worth exploring. Read our Q&A with veteran foreign correspondent Tim Arango, who says a good story is where you find … Read more
There are awards upon awards in journalism. But since its launch in 1917, the Pulitzer Prizes have set the gold standard for newspaper reporting, writing, commentary, photography and more. The 100-plus years since have not been without controversy, whether … Read more
This column was originally published as an issue of Nieman Storyboard’s weekly newsletter. You can read back issues of the newsletter and subscribe here. Thoughts this week turn to the creativity that is rising out of … Read more
Some journalistic tenets are almost sacred, among them: The story is not about us. But sometimes, the story is. Or at least the journalist is living the same story as his or her sources and readers. That is especially … Read more
Journalism is, at core, a reactive profession. Something happens; journalists react. Then they cover the counter-reaction to the reaction, and track any consequences as they dribble out. I used to think of this as the Day 1-Day 2 story … Read more
Do you remember your college commencement speaker, or anything s/he said? I had it in my head that a state legislator spoke at my high school graduation in 1970, but had to reach out to former classmates to confirm … Read more
