By Jacqui Banaszynski A hopeful-news detour from a study of the art and craft of story work, to the shaky business that supports that work. In this case, To summarize it, I borrow from our sister publication, Nieman Reports: … Read more
By Jacqui Banaszynski One of the back-to-school things I looked forward to in grade school was the Weekly Reader, a tab-sized newspaper that was handed out in class. I suppose it carried some features and news stories. But I … Read more
By Jacqui Banaszynski Imagine the directive in the image above is not an end game, but a prompt. What if you added something more descriptive? Read more broadly. Read more thoughtfully. Read more openly. Or, my mantra: Read more … Read more
By Jacqui Banaszynski According to my pre-Wordle morning scans of social media in recent days, it’s back-to-school time. That seems awfully early to me (What happened to waiting until after Labor Day?), but my own teaching career found me … Read more
By Jacqui Banaszynski At the many writing workshops I lead, the primary struggles reporters raise involve, duh, writing. But when six health-reporting fellows gathered recently, the challenges they brought to the fore centered around reporting. And these were not … Read more
By Jacqui Banaszynski Reporter friends after swap tales about the stories and tips they picked up from cabbies when they travel on assignments. That’s seldom been successful for me. First, I’m not big on man-on-the-street type reporting; it usually … Read more
By Jacqui Banaszynski Prison stories are a special challenge for journalists. The gold standards of journalism are relevance and relatability. But it can be hard for many readers and listeners, if not most, to relate to people who have … Read more
By Jacqui Banaszynski Everybody talks about the weather — more than ever these days. But not everybody gets death threats for their comments. Yet that’s what happened to Chris Gloninger, a chief meteorologist who had moved from his native … Read more
By Jacqui Banaszynski After our mother died, my brothers and I gathered to clean out and sell our childhood home. An inevitable part of that process was to sort through her lifetime of marriage, motherhood, friendships, part-time jobs and … Read more
By Jacqui Banaszynski For five years now, I’ve been acutely aware of the arrival of Friday mornings. Not because my datebook tells me so. Not because the weekend is ahead. But because I am suddenly eager to do the … Read more
