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.

"If you think of all these words just staggering around, grammar is their social order, their government."

“If you think of all these words just staggering around, grammar is their social order, their government.”

Who can say what causes a reader to pause, in one moment, a line or passage she might zoom through at other times? Some sudden notice of the melody of…
January 31, 2020
Free writing: Releasing your inner artist

Free writing: Releasing your inner artist

Somewhere in the early pages of “Draft No. 4: On the Writing Process,” John McPhee gives a nod to daily news reporters. The author and New Yorker writer was explaining…
January 23, 2020
Not just another sappy Christmas story

Not just another sappy Christmas story

Reporters of a certain place and time — Eugene, Oregon, in the 1970s — loved to tell stories about how they were hired. At the time, the Eugene Register-Guard was…
January 3, 2020
The narrative of the year behind? Start now

The narrative of the year behind? Start now

Come the close of any calendar year, and look-back pieces are as common as failed New Year resolutions. At the close of a decade — even more.So when one rises…
January 1, 2020
Dishing up some sides of gratitude with notes

Dishing up some sides of gratitude with notes

Editor’s note: It’s Thanksgiving, that singular and, for many, favorite American holiday. We welcome you to hunt around for stories of the true origins of the day, rather than the…
November 28, 2019
Some warbly thoughts on "voice"

Some warbly thoughts on “voice”

Defining a writer’s “voice” has always stumped me. It came up again recently, when a journalism professor put me on speaker phone with her class of college freshmen, who had…
November 22, 2019
"As they say, history does not repeat itself, but it rhymes."

“As they say, history does not repeat itself, but it rhymes.”

— Margaret Atwood, from her dystopian novel "The Testaments"
November 13, 2019
These boots were made for discovery

These boots were made for discovery

Tom Curwen’s new boots, size 17AAA, handmade by boot maker Randy MerrellThey say every good narrative is a journey.Los Angeles Times reporter Thomas Curwen starts his by looking down. Literally.…
October 25, 2019
From five minutes to finished

From five minutes to finished

Hang out at a journalism workshop, anywhere in the world, and inevitably the subject comes up: We’re being asked to produce more and more, in less and less time.It was…
October 18, 2019
"The third is when you can make a basket without worrying about whether it is good enough."

“The third is when you can make a basket without worrying about whether it is good enough.”

If this sentence seems lacking a word, it is. We’ll get to that in a moment. Until then, bookmark the notion of “good enough” — an aspiration that seems to…
October 11, 2019