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.

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?

Learning to teach, teaching to learn

By Jacqui Banaszynski in Blog, Journalism, Reporting, Students, Teaching, Writing Tags: Missouri School of Journalism, students, teaching, Writing Process

The University (in the capital-U sense) wants my “teaching philosophy.” Reasons for that request are happy, which isn’t always the case with a cap-U request. But happy doesn’t get the work done. So…

First: Thank God and Whoever Else had more important things to attend to while I taught at Missouri for 15 years without figuring that bit out.

Second: Even greater thanks, with apologies, to the students on the receiving end of me figuring it out as I go. And a deep bow to the Missouri Method – learn by doing – which doesn’t end with students.

Third: I have to write something. Cue anxiety, procrastination, much abuse of the F-word, coffee and wine.