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.
As the daily read of crucial issues — racial injustice, the pandemic, the political divide, the battered environment, the brutal economy — expands and deepens, I keep looking for those moments of insight and clarity that prompt a silent … Read more
Major League Baseball, that beloved summer sport, returns to a shortened season later this month. Or at least it is scheduled to, but as with all things in the time of coronavirus, schedules are subject to change. In honor … Read more
During the 15 years that Chip Scanlan taught writing workshops at the Poynter Institute, he wrote a popular column called “Chip on Your Shoulder.” Searching Poynter’s archives takes some work, but you can find a … Read more
In a work-related Zoom meeting recently, a colleague referred to Reddit as “lightning in a bottle.” I’m not entirely sure what that meant, despite her best efforts to explain it to my dial-up mind, but it made me want … Read more
It’s not possible for the everyday reader to know who wrote that sentence. The lead writer who was pulling feeds from several reporters in the field? One of the field reporters who had scratched it in theirs notes? An … Read more
On May 23, 2020, (May 24 in print), the New York Times landed a daring and historic front page: A wash of overwhelming gray, which jumped to two more gray pages inside the print paper. To mark the deaths … Read more
All news is the stuff of history. But some deserves more than a dusty archive to be stumbled upon by a research scholar. It is an immediate marker that demands be heeded for the ages. We are living in … Read more
Now for something fun and funky, or at least distracting, but these days I’m sure we could all use fun and funky, or at least distracting. A starter’s guide to Stephen King, courtesy of … Read more
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
