Author

Jacqui Banaszynski

@JacquiB

Jacqui Banaszynski retired as the endowed Knight Chair in Editing at the Missouri School of Journalism in 2017, is editor emerita 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.

"During six Sundays, he never varied his routine, faithful as a migratory mallard, his route taking him through a neighborhood of apartments that all seemed to be dying of boredom."

“During six Sundays, he never varied his routine, faithful as a migratory mallard, his route taking him through a neighborhood of apartments that all seemed to be dying of boredom.”

—Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Viet Thanh Nguyen
August 15, 2018
"I think of myself as a humble student trying to get better and just lucky to still be getting chances to do it.”

“I think of myself as a humble student trying to get better and just lucky to still be getting chances to do it.”

—Actor Jeff Goldblum in an interview with New York Times reporter Kathryn Shattuck
August 9, 2018
"What is beyond grief?"

“What is beyond grief?”

—University of Washington marine researcher Deborah Giles
August 1, 2018
Learning to read: The daily news as information and inspiration

Learning to read: The daily news as information and inspiration

Editor’s note: Our third Shop Class – part of our Story Craft posts – grew out of breaking news stories and blogs that offer rich lessons on how to do the…
July 27, 2018
"But the sea, too, took its toll."

“But the sea, too, took its toll.”

—Jason Horowitz of the New York Times, reporting on deadline about the deadly wildfires outside Athens, Greece
July 25, 2018
Learning to see: A landscape of ice, a blind boy's eyes, a grizzly bear and a wall stain

Learning to see: A landscape of ice, a blind boy’s eyes, a grizzly bear and a wall stain

How writers use color to develop metaphor, meaning and emotion
July 25, 2018

“She’s just telling what’s real out there that she sees.”

—Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Anne Tyler on discovering Eudora Welty
July 11, 2018

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

—First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America
July 4, 2018
"You can't hit or write your way out of a shadow."

“You can’t hit or write your way out of a shadow.”

—Rob Hiassen, editor at the Capital Gazette in Annapolis, Maryland
June 29, 2018
Learning to see beyond first sight

Learning to see beyond first sight

Editor’s note: We are trying out a new feature. Call it writing practice (with a nod to Natalie Goldberg’s “Writing Down the Bones,” where I first encountered the term). Or…
June 28, 2018