By Jacqui Banaszynski That political hangover I mentioned several days ago, as I braced for the first (and maybe last) presidential debate of this fraught election season, has turned into a full-blown intellectual headache. It was especially interesting to … Read more
EDITOR’S NOTE: The interview with Mike Wilson of The New York Times is another in our occasional series “What makes a good editor” and will be followed by his annotation of a story by Chicago correspondent Jonathan Weisman, about the … Read more
By Jacqui Banaszynski One way I suss out my interest in a book is to read the blurbs from book reviewers and other writers. I note what people say about a book to determine if it suits my reading … Read more
By Jacqui Banaszynski In a companion piece, the bots channeled you, the Storyboard readers, to identify the top posts, by pageview, in 2023. It’s a strong list, and offers stories you can learn from again and again. Now I … Read more
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the second post in our focused series on the core elements of narrative by narrative journalist and teacher Lauren Kessler. Future posts will explore the development of character and crafting of story endings. 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
Even the most dramatic news about the journalism is seldom a surprise. Budgets are cut. Awards are given. Veterans retire or are bought out. Book contracts are signed. But collecting a sampling and studying what came before can offer … Read more
Lizzie Johnson’s work covering the deadly wildfires that have scorched California in recent years has earned a place in these posts in the past. Most notable was an annotation of a piece for the San Francisco Chronicle in which … Read more
Congratulations to winners of the 2021 NLA Awards, announced this week by the News Leaders Association (the merger of the former American Society of Newspaper Editors and the Associated Press Managing Editors). As the contest season … Read more
Cal Hooper is a Chicago cop who was ditched by his wife, estranged from his daughter, haunted by past cases and addicted to the action. Somewhere along the way, the guiding line between right and wrong became fuzzy. Fed … Read more