I met a Pulitzer Prize winner on the weekend.
Jacqui Banaszynski was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for stories she did about the Ethiopian famine in the 1980s. She won the Pulitzer Prize for her stories AIDS in the Heartland, which was published in 1988, when AIDS was new, unknown, and carried an incredible stigma.
She followed the lives and deaths of two Midwest farmers who were diagnosed with AIDS. At that time little was known about the disease and those suffering from it became pariahs. It was groundbreaking and important stuff. Thing we newspapermen aspire to. I’m a long way from a Pulitzer, but rubbing elbows with someone who has been there is indeed inspiring.
Not only has Banaszynski won a Pulitzer, but she holds the Knight Chair in Editing at the Missouri School of Journalism and is on the visiting faculty of The Poynter Institute. In the newspaper world, that’s big stuff. Hobnobbing with some august company indeed.
Banaszynski was outspoken and down-to-earth. She stressed how important storytelling is to our society and we, in this business, are some of society’s storytellers. It’s important that we do it well.
She also recognized that this business is also rushing to the digital media. A daily deadline used to be tough enough, now we’re always on deadline because we can publish immediately to our Web sites. The worry is that good storytelling will be lost in the rush to get it out fast and first.
Can the two co-exist? Certainly. They have to. We can’t lose our storytellers.
Banaszynski told us why. She told of the incredible experience of spending time in a relief camp in Africa where 75 people died every day and where girls pushed rags into the mud and then pulled them out in an effort to squeeze a few drops of water out of the mud. She told of how, at night, amid the despair and death, the elders in the camp would sing.
Much like North American natives, they used oral histories. What they were doing was telling their stories to the youngsters in hopes that their stories would live on they would be remembered. It becomes very important for those facing death.
Even in a place as rudimentary as a tent camp in the sub-Sahara, storytelling is important to humans. It’s important to us. And, it’s an honour to be a storyteller.
• • •
For those who like generational items, Banaszynski had a good one. Her story about AIDS in the Heartland, as you might guess, is a favourite among her students at the Missouri School of Journalism and the Poynter Institute. If you are going to be taught by a Pulitzer Prize winner, you want to see what they did to win the award.
Banaszynski said most students read her piece and understood it. Remember, it was written during a time when AIDS was feared and those with it were stigmatized. One student, she said, told her he didn’t get it. It was just a story about a couple of gay guys.