About Jacqui Banaszynski

Posts by Jacqui Banaszynski:

Professionals in paper hats

By Jacqui Banaszynski in Blog, Editing, Journalism, Reading

This week’s news out of The Oregonian – aka Oregon Media Group (OMG!), aka Advance Central Services Oregon, aka Advance Publications, aka Who Can Keep Up – doesn’t mention layoffs. It just says it will be “saying goodbye to our longtime press employees.” Alt-weekly Willamette Week puts those who face that long goodbye at 100 to 200.

So what? Just one more tale of the legacy news industry being swamped by the digital tsunami. Pain on one front; progress on another. The march of time and technology. Horses to cars to rocketships and all that.

But this has me thinking about more than a few specialized jobs lost, or about a class of workers whose strong, gnarled, expert fingers might not be suited to the teensy keyboards on an iPhone. It also has me thinking about an essential part of the news operation that few outside our world think about, and even fewer see. And about what – and who – it has taken to do this work as well as it should be done.

So here’s an homage to the men (and yes, they were mostly that) who run the presses. They did – and do – far more than slap drums of paper onto massive rollers and make sure the stack-and-wrap machines didn’t jam. They never had a byline or asked for an award or even a thank-you. But they did their work in the communities they lived in. They cared about that work. They made my journalism better. They made me better.

Stories for now and eternity

By Jacqui Banaszynski in Blog, Journalism, Reading, Teaching, Writing

I’ve been too long absent from this place, waiting for the two things I tell my writing students never to wait for: Time and the Muse.

Time remains elusive. But the Muse visited today, demanding attention in the form of the wonderful Brain Pickings, which is one of the rare reasons to wade through the rest of the internet swamp (and yes, I subscribe). Today’s offering excerpted a lecture by Neil Gaiman. (And above quote is attributed to him.)

I am abashed to admit I wasn’t onto Gaiman until a few months ago. He’s a short fiction and graphic novel guy, and somehow escaped my notice. Now, true to the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon, aka selective attention, I stumble across him frequently. Thank the story gods for that.

I could pull countless snippets from Gaiman’s lecture, which he apparently spent more than two years writing. (If true, I’m grateful to him for that. Makes me feel less sluggy and stupid.) And Gaiman’s comments are, at heart, about fiction – the stories that come from our human hearts, emotions and imaginations.

But his wisdom applies just as well to my world of literary nonfiction.

Clarity as elegance

By Jacqui Banaszynski in Blog, Books, Editing, Journalism, Students, Teaching, Writing

William Zinsser died today. He was 92, so no great shock, I guess. And his legacy lives on in books, articles and even blogs, so we can’t even say he’s really gone.

Even so, as soon as I stumbled across the news via FB, I hunted through my Seattle bookshelves trying to find my tattered, old-style paperback of “On Writing Well.” Not there. It must be in my office at Mizzou. I hate not finding books when and where I want them. I’m tempted to order an updated version from Amazon, despite my ambivalence about that big-footed behemoth and my links here to the same. It could be in my hands tomorrow, and I could sink into my red leather reading chair to immerse into Zinsser’s wisdom – wisdom he set down so clearly and that I seem to forget every time I write.

No sense in the senseless, but a necessary job

By Jacqui Banaszynski in Blog, Interviewing, Journalism, Reporting, Students, Teaching

The verdict in the Boston Marathon Bombing was rendered today.

I wonder why we put such events in capital letters. Does it help us learn from them? Or does it just amplify their awful glory? (If I were still a reporter, I’d explore that question.)

I wonder if a jury verdict really resolves anything, for anyone – the accused, the victims, the aggrieved. Does it provide what modern society calls “closure?” Does it mete out whatever it is we think of as justice? Or is it more about revenge? (I’d explore those questions, too, without any expectation of a definitive answer, but hoping the questions would prompt deeper thinking, and maybe better answers for the future. I hold on to a shred of idealism that way.)

But tonight I’m thinking of the late Monday afternoon almost two years ago, just a few hours after the bombings. I was rushing to my writing class at the Missouri School of Journalism. A young man followed – chased – me down the hall.

Stories from the ground up

By Jacqui Banaszynski in Blog, Books, Journalism, Writing Tags: Books, journalism, Reading, writing

In this, the second installment of Dog Eared Discoveries, my bookshelves offer up “Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher,” Timothy Egan’s epic biography of photographer Edward Curtis.

I have long been a fan of Curtis’ images, which seem to sear right to the soul – both that of the subject and that of the viewer. It is like Curtis demands that we see past the cliché and costume of the Native American to their essential humanity. And, perhaps, that we question our own humanity. As a young reporter in Minneapolis, one of my few freelance pieces was about a stunning collection of Curtis photos obtained by a St. Paul gallery. To this day, I regret that I did not forego a year’s worth of shoes and heat and dinners out to buy one. Now I can visit an entire wall of them at Chihuly Garden & Glass at Seattle Center.

I also am a fan of Tim Egan’s work. As an editor at The Seattle Times, I winced on many Sundays when a piece of his in The New York Times would stitch together the pieces-parts we had reported over several months into one big, meaningful quilt. I have been even more taken with his book-length work about early 20th century American history: The government’s complicit role in the Dust Bowl; the creation of the U.S. Forest Service in the wake of a devastating forest fire; Curtis’ obsessive quest to capture the end of an era. (And now, of course, he also now writes those no-BS Opinionator pieces in The Times. Damn, he’s good.)

There are dozens of dog-eared pages in my copy of “Short Nights” (mass-produced paperback version, so much more affordable than a Curtis original).

Hoop dreams, writer dreams

By Jacqui Banaszynski in Blog, Journalism, Students, Writing Tags: journalism, Missouri School of Journalism, students, teaching, writing

My Guy loves basketball. He accuses me of exaggeration, but during March Madness I had to nudge (nag?) him away from the TV more than once to get him out the door for errands or into the kitchen for dinner. He can be transfixed by the jazzy squeak of sneakers and the aggressive-yet-fluid moves of the players.

What does that have to do with journalism or writing or anything these posts claim to be about?

Maybe a lot, according to a recent piece in The New York Times. So if you’re a young – or not-so-young – journalist/writer impatient with your progress, or frustrated with your career status, or just wondering how I’m going to connect these dots, hang in.

Dog-eared discoveries

By Jacqui Banaszynski in Blog, Books, Reading, Teaching, Writing Tags: Books, Reading, teaching, writing

My reverence for books does not keep me from underlining passages, scribbling margin notes or, gulp, dog-earing the page corners. Every time I think I need to clear out some of my overburdened bookshelves, I see those blunted page corners and realize there is yet another treasure trove I have stored but not mined.

So… as part of this BackStory journey, I’ve given myself a goal that is doable and delightfully distracting: Grab a book at random, open it to whatever page is scored, and share the find. Not sure what it will add up to, if anything. Maybe just a way for me to archive the gems, unbend the corners and, bigger gulp, pass on the books.

Everything you need to know you can learn from five basic beats

By Jacqui Banaszynski in Blog, Interviewing, Journalism, Reporting, Students, Writing Tags: beat coverage, cops&courts, journalism, Obits, students, writing

Note, with love, to my soon-to-graduate Baby Js:

It’s that time of year when you can no longer ignore the Real World rushing your way. Funny how it always seems to catch you by surprise. Of course, Christmas and Mother’s Day always seem to catch newsrooms by surprise, and I get tripped up every March by the looming tax-filing deadline. So I’ll cut you some slack.

The hustlers among you already have locked in summer internships or first jobs. But that thin thread of security doesn’t ease your larger anxiety: What do you need to do to succeed? Or perhaps better put, how do you get to do what you really want to do, and do it as soon as possible?

What postcards can teach writers

By Jacqui Banaszynski in Blog, Journalism, Reporting, Students, Teaching, Writing

A friend sent this Washington Post story today about the dwindling popularity of postcards. Just one more tradition being disrupted, eclipsed, overrun ~ pick your victor verb ~ by digital convenience and social media ubiquity.

I note it here because postcards have always held a special place in my life. If I were a collector, postcards would be high on my list. Not for the initial image, but for the act of sending and receiving, and the magic of storytelling involved in that action.

When I send students off into the world or reporters on assignment, the one thing I ask is that they send me a postcard. I’m always delighted when one actually arrives. I love seeing the images they choose, being introduced to their handwriting (a rare thing these days) and being enchanted by the mini-story they’ve chosen to tell me.

Because that’s another huge value of postcards. They are the perfect venue for practicing the craft ~ and purpose ~ of storytelling.

Trekkie Ethics, with a Vulcan hand salute

By Jacqui Banaszynski in Blog, Interviewing, Journalism, Reporting, Teaching Tags: journalism, Journalism Ethics, Star Trek

Today, I raise a Vulcan hand salute to Leonard Nimoy. To the unparalleled character he developed as Star Trek’s Mr. Spock, and to the even more creative man who played that, and other, roles, on screen and off. In tribute, and without apology, I offer a touchstone: “Trekkie Ethics.” It might not pass muster with the more serious scholars of either journalism or ethics, but it leans on their wisdom, and has served me well. – in work and in life.

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