Author

Jacqui Banaszynski

@JacquiB

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.

How to become a "five-tool" storyteller

How to become a “five-tool” storyteller

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…
July 14, 2020
Four questions mine for bottomless wisdom

Four questions mine for bottomless wisdom

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,…
July 10, 2020
"Violence of the light miraculous."

“Violence of the light miraculous.”

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…
June 26, 2020
"They were tired, so tired and still they returned."

“They were tired, so tired and still they returned.”

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…
June 11, 2020
The challenge of writing a life in two lines

The challenge of writing a life in two lines

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…
June 10, 2020
A confluence of hard news that demands uncomfortable considerations

A confluence of hard news that demands uncomfortable considerations

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…
June 9, 2020
Reading (Stephen King) to learn to write

Reading (Stephen King) to learn to write

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…
June 3, 2020
"... the only true medicine I could provide."

“… the only true medicine I could provide.”

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.…
May 29, 2020
Reverse engineering your story or project

Reverse engineering your story or project

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…
May 26, 2020
"Execution is as important as vision."

“Execution is as important as vision.”

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…
May 13, 2020