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.
I’ve always questioned the old aphorism that misery loves company. When I let myself throw a Pity Party, it’s a pretty self-absorbed affair, with room for only one in the spotlight. But it is comforting to be reminded, now … Read more
A standard — some would say ideal — approach to effective narrative nonfiction is to follow a single, primary character through an intimate journey that illuminates a larger social situation. The key is to find a person to follow … Read more
The headlines coming out of last week’s public hearing of the Congressional Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol focused on the unanimous vote to issue a subpoena to a former president requiring his … Read more
There has been a small but steady wave of recent stories focused on the plight of women in Afghanistan, who have been stripped of their rights — to jobs, to education, to choosing their wardrobe or having their hair … Read more
A group of journalists clustered along a table at a lovely restaurant in Bergen, Norway, late last month, chattering about our work and how good it was to be back in the wrap of the narrative tribe after our … Read more
Moni Basu was a news reporter at the Atlanta Journal Constitution (AJC) when she was sent to Baghdad to write about a Georgia-based military unit. It was 2005. The 48th Infantry Brigade, a National Guard unit, hadn’t been called … Read more
Story craft surrounds us, not just in journalism but in pretty much everything I can think of. Proof, I guess, that humans are hard-wired for story. It teaches, informs, entertains, enlightens, cautions, guides us and more. I have been … Read more
A few years ago, Line Vaaben was eating a traditional Christmas dinner at her home in Copenhagen. Vaaben, a 2014 European Press Prize finalist, remembered a story that followed a potato from the field … Read more
The Queen is dead. Long live the King. OK, that may be the most predictable line I’ve ever written, but a version of it has been working for the Brits for, what, about 1,100 years … Read more
We interrupt your syllabus prep with this important message: Consider Nieman Storyboard as a resource – and even publication destination – in your reporting, writing and journalism ethics courses. Storyboard is a trove of what I call “story work.” … Read more
