Pulitzer Prize Winner's Research Focuses on the Future of Storytelling
An interview with Jacqueline Banaszynski as she begins her Fellowship year.
By Alecia Swasy
Sept. 2009
Jacqui Banaszynski
In 1988, Jacqueline Banaszynski won the Pulitzer Prize for her series on the life and death of two gay farmers. “AIDS in the Heartland,” totaled roughly 24,000 words, with equal space given to great photography, when published by the St. Paul Pioneer Press.
“If we had had access to audio and video on the Internet, we could have told a more multi-layered story,” Banaszynski says. But on the flipside, would today’s technological advances matter in this era of staff, newsprint and budget cuts? “Would we be given the time to do that story in today’s climate?” she says.
Her passion for storytelling, which also earned her a 1986 nomination as a Pulitzer finalist for international reporting on the Ethiopian famine, has shaped her research plan for her 2009-2010 Donald W. Reynolds Fellowship.
Stories “define us as human beings…story telling is how people connect.”
“One thing getting lost in the combination of cutbacks and Twitter speed is the kind of in-depth storytelling journalists were encouraged to do in the ‘80s and ‘90s,” says Banaszynski, who holds the Knight Chair in Editing at the Missouri School of Journalism. And that impacts the public, not just those who make a living crafting the stories. “Stories define us as human beings. They were written on rocks, and maybe some day they will be written on the stars. Story telling is how people connect,” she says.
Banaszynski wants to figure out how people in 2009 are using journalistic stories in their own lives. “What do they get from them? What’s missing?” she says.
“I’m curious if people feel they’re missing a shared story or not.”
“With the rise of social networking, Facebook and Twitter, people get to choose the stories they want versus getting the shared story from the daily paper and Walter Cronkite,” she says. “I’m curious if people feel they’re missing a shared story or not. I’m also curious to know what kind of storytelling techniques work best on the Web.”
That interaction between the public and old and new media is another one of Banaszynski’s passions. Her proposal for the Reynolds Fellowship was “pretty serendipitous,” growing out of discussions with other faculty and fellows at RJI. It started as a look at the new partnerships or disconnects between the public and the press, before morphing into a more detailed focus on what she calls “Story Futures.”
“I’ll revert to being a reporter.”
Banaszynski, who has been teaching at Mizzou for nine years, also works with news organizations, coaching and training editors and writers. She is also an adjunct professor at the Poynter Institute. After working as a reporter in St. Paul, Banaszynski moved to project editing at the Oregonian and The Seattle Times.
How does she plan to tackle her latest project? “I’ll revert to being a reporter,” she says. Indeed, she will also be teaching at Mizzou this Fall semester. That will help her “stay very much plugged in. If we’re wrestling with an idea about the journalism of the future, I want my students to be part of that conversation.”