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.
By Jacqui Banaszynski Do anything often enough and long enough and you probably, at times, fall into the occasional rut. I don’t know of any fellow journalist, no matter their age or experience, who hasn’t lamented that their work … Read more
By Jacqui Banaszynski The video screens on the back of airplane seats are small and often smudged. But for many years, when I flew twice a week for work, that’s where I saw most movies. The filmophiles in my … Read more
By Jacqui Banaszynski Context is a core to good reporting, especially when current events are informed by history, law, geopolitics, culture, economics or the many other things that complicate modern life. A singular moment is seldom that. Context can, … Read more
By Jacqui Banaszynski Consider the tease of the writer’s muse. We wait and wait and wait for her to show up, and get more anxious about her absence as deadline nears. So we thrash through something as the clock … Read more
By Jacqui Banaszynski You don’t need insider access, aka paid subscriber status, to the news to overindulge in speculation about the possible indictment coming down from a Manhattan grand jury against former President Donald J. Trump. You also probably … Read more
By Jacqui Banaszynski I long ago abandoned the illusion that I could block spam from my inboxes, prevent hacks of my accounts or keep much of my private business private. Unless you live way off-the-grid — maybe in a … Read more
Ireturned from a recent three-day watercolor workshop with three marginal values’ studies in gray (trying to see and control the range of light-to-dark without being distracted by color), and a scrap of paper scribbled with doodles and notes. Some … Read more
By Jacqui Banaszynski As I read Celeste Ng’s most recent novel, I couldn’t help but think of George Orwell’s “1984” or Margaret Atwood’s “A Handmaid’s Tale.” Nor could I avoid echoes to discordant times in real life in recent … Read more
By Jacqui Banaszynski A large property sprawls on the north side of the state highway that runs from mountain cabin in the Washington Cascades to the town where I buy groceries. At least I assume It’s a large property. Read more
By Jacqui Banaszynski Let’s, for a moment, consider squirrels. Stick with me. There’s a reason for this, and it has to do with things threatened and endangered. More specifically to that point, the subject is the western … Read more
