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.
You have a great idea. You’ve vetted it with trusted friends. You’ve done your pre-reporting — or at least some. You are jazzed and ready to pitch, and have a publication in your sights. Then you hit the tripwires: … Read more
Editor’s Note: This is the first in an occasional series of posts that elaborate on some of the most basic weaknesses in story pitching. You can find other resources about pitching, including examples of successful pitches, … Read more
Hiram Walker is a motherless young slave in Virginia, fathered by the lord of a plantation that is clinging to shreds of grace even as the land plays out from overplanting with tobacco, half-brother to the plantation’s dissolute heir. Read more
Too many great-sounding story ideas never go beyond that. They stop with an impassioned chat at a favorite watering hole, or are grumbled about, again and again, by a disgruntled colleague who can’t seem to bust through whatever is … Read more
It would be folly to follow the thousands (millions?) of sentences that have been written since Tuesday (Aug. 11, 2020), when presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden announced that U.S. Senator Kamala Harris of California would be his vice … Read more
Seventy-five years ago, on Aug. 6, 1945, a plane called the Enola Gay, manned by a crew from the U.S. Army Air Force, flew over the Japanese city of Hiroshima and dropped the world’s first atomic bomb. The bomb … Read more
The self-checkout line at my funky neighborhood grocery was wide open, but I waited for the old-fashioned line, with a checker and a bagger. I don’t like to weigh my own Honeycrisps any more than I’ve ever learned to … Read more
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
