About
Experience
Awards

I like to write* as if we are having a casual conversation.

But if we work together, my goal as a ghostwriter is to capture your voice and point of view, not mine.

Mackenzie Ryan Walters

National award winning journalist. Business book and memoir ghostwriter.

THREE QUESTIONS

1) What’s your favorite professional skill?

Asking good questions. I’m still a journalist at heart, but it’s way more fun to be “on your side.” My husband sometimes asks me, “How did you get all that?” on the way home. “I like asking questions” is my reply.

2) Why book ghostwriting?

Great stories fascinate me. They always have an element of change and transformation. How did you get from here to there? Who guided you and what did you learn along the way?

3) What’s your favorite part of book ghostwriting?

There’s two, really. One is the structural edit, where we’ve spent hours unearthing and discussing elements of the book and I can finally see how it all fits together.

I also really enjoy the relationship between the author and the ghostwriter. The relationship we develop as an author-writer partnership is critical to your book’s success. When we collaborate, it’s not about me; I enjoy being behind the scenes.

Professional bio

Mackenzie Ryan Walters is a national award-winning journalist, wife, and bonus mom who’s discovered the joy of reconnecting with her Midwest roots.

Originally from Minnesota, Mackenzie attended American University in Washington, D.C., and spent the next 14 years as a newspaper reporter in multiple states, including both coasts, the Midwest, and Florida, which is a state unto its own.

After being asked to help aspiring authors multiple times over the years, she finally said yes and realized it was everything she loved about journalism, but a lot more fun. She’s scheduled to release her own book, Faith Storytellers: Unleash the Power of Your Story, in 2024.

Mackenzie’s storytelling experience ranges from covering a presidential campaign for one of the top newspapers in the country to reporting a 30-minute television documentary that took her inside NASA. She’s recorded radio stories for an NPR affiliate, co-founded and launched a live storytelling series, and helped organizations better understand how to improve their message or services for the audiences they want to attract.

Despite her travels, Mackenzie is happiest at home. She volunteers as a youth group leader at her church, and enjoys growing cut flowers in the summer and baking sourdough bread in the winter. When the weather allows, you'll find her paddle boarding with her dog, Maddie. Mackenzie lives in West Des Moines, Iowa, with her husband, Andy, and their two boys.

Experience

StoryStruck Marketing

I started StoryStruck in 2019 with a mission to bring journalistic storytelling to the business community. I grew a marketing agency to multiple six figures, but realized I didn’t love what I was doing. I lacked the same passion I had as a journalist.

I pivoted to focus on audience and marketing research (which scratches my research-and-reporting itch) and ghostwriting books for businesses (which is the storytelling I love).

I now work with authors to create a business book outline and then ghostwrite their manuscript. Thanks to my network of creative professionals, I offer additional self publishing services, but that’s not required to work with me.

The Des Moines Register
FLORIDA TODAY

The last two newspapers I worked for were among the best in the country, including the Pulitzer-winning Register and the lesser-known FLORIDA TODAY.

The former is a political reporting powerhouse, since it covered the Iowa caucuses and the start of nearly all presidential campaigns. Our nation’s top politicians came to woo our editorial board and make their pitch to Iowans, who — despite what the national press might have said — are actually quite discerning and thoughtful in who they decide to caucus for.

The other had NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in its backyard in one of the wackiest news states in the country. An editor once told me that every major crime will somehow tie back to Brevard County, even if they’re just passing through. There’s a reason Florida is considered a training ground for national journalists.

I’d also be remiss if I didn’t mention The St. Cloud Times, which is where my training wheels came off and I first developed reporting legs. The “mighty little paper on the prairie” sent journalists to Afghanistan and swept the state newspaper awards each year. It was an amazing newsroom to start my career, with a true family and mentoring atmosphere.

Awards

THE DES MOINES REGISTER

  • Coverage of Education Award, Iowa Newspaper Association

“Black Iowa: Still Unequal?”

  • Great Plains Journalism Award, Beat Reporting

  • Iowa Newspaper Association Award, Coverage of Education

  • Iowa Newspaper Association Award, News Story / Series

  • Leading the Way Award, United Way of Central Iowa

  • Star Award, The Des Moines Register

FLORIDA TODAY

Portfolio of Work

  • National Award for Education Reporting, Education Writers Association, Beat Reporting (Click for link)

George Zimmerman verdict coverage

  • Florida Society of News Editors Award, Use of Social Media in Breaking News

STATESMAN JOURNAL

  • Tim Sly Memorial Award, Statesman Journal

“The Experience Factor”

  • Society of Professional Journalists Pacific Northwest Award, Education Reporting

  • Best of Gannett Award, Digital Innovation

“Oregon’s Financial Gamble”

  • Society of Professional Journalists Pacific Northwest Award, Investigative Reporting

  • Oregon Newspaper Publishers Association Award, Best Enterprise Reporting

  • Best of Gannett Award, Digital Innovation

THE ST. CLOUD TIMES

  • Harold Schoelkopf Award, The St. Cloud Times

Special Report: Train Derailments

  • Minnesota Society of Professional Journalists Award, Newspaper Best Overall Package

  • Minnesota Newspaper Association Award, Freedom of Information

  • Minnesota Newspaper Association Award, Best Investigative Reporting

  • Association of Minnesota Emergency Managers Award, Outstanding Print Media

“Balancing Act”

  • Minnesota Newspaper Association Award, Best Investigative Reporting

“Chlorine injures 38”

  • Minnesota Newspaper Association Award, Best Local Story

“DeSoto closes”

  • Minnesota Newspaper Association Award, Best Local Story

Sauk Rapids bridge “charticle”

  • Minnesota Newspaper Association Award, Best Use of Information Graphics and Graphic Illustrations

AMERICAN UNIVERSITY, Washington, D.C.

  • Magna Cum Laude and Honors

  • American News Women’s Club Scholarship Recipient

  • Hanna M. Sandler Award for Mathematics

Education

Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Business Program

  • DMACC and Babson College

  • Certificate of Entrepreneurship

I grew my marketing agency to a point where I needed to better understand how a business operates from the top down, instead of the bottom up. The 10KSB program is well respected; it’s been described as an MBA for small business owners. I can’t recommend it enough. It was a partnership the Goldman Sachs Foundation, DMACC and Babson College.

University of Iowa

  • MBA Classes

I practically aced the verbal section of the GMAT, but had to remember my dormant math skills. I took a variety of MBA classes while working full time as a journalist, but dropped out to start my company, StoryStruck Marketing.

I should set the record straight: A few years later I started dating a man who grew up in Ames. He spotted a Hawkeye mug in my cupboard one night and asked me to get rid of it. Immediately.

As an out-of-stater who attended a college without a football team, I realized two things. The Iowa-Iowa State rivalry was more intense than I initially thought, and more importantly, my choice was clear. I now have an Iowa State throw pillow, a Christmas gift from my stepson, among T-shits, sweatshirts, and other Cyclone swag scattered around our house.

American University — Washington, D.C.

  • Bachelor’s in Journalism and Economics

I majored in print journalism and economics. My professors had storied careers at the NYT, WaPo, BBC, and USAT, among others. They took a learn-and-apply approach to journalism education (instead of a theory-based one).

My senior year, I was the editor-in-chief of the college newspaper, my first real business leadership experience, so hear me out.

As the paper’s main leader and spender of its money, I made strategic investments. I upgraded to digital cameras, brought color to what was a black-and-white paper, and went all-in on the police blotter, which was widely read on campus and became a bragging point among certain students. “I was in the blotter this weekend!” Students, professors, and administrators started to notice.

I also made hard decisions. I set and enforced policy so we would get to sleep at a decent hour and not miss morning classes. I put my peers in jobs based on their strengths and personality. And I managed way too much interpersonal drama.

We also earned an industry-standard 30% profit, which is rare among student-run newspapers. It certainly wasn’t happening the years before.

I didn’t have a fancy journalism internship, but I did lead and run what was essentially a small business. Along with my team of 30ish, we broke news, innovated our offerings, overcame adversity, and invested those hard-earned profits into new equipment and a networking event with newspaper alumni. We all wanted jobs when we graduated, after all! I learned more as editor than in any of my classes.

*Have you found any typos on my website? I’m as fat-thumbed as they come. Does that mean you shouldn’t work with me as your ghostwriter?

Before you make up your mind, consider these points:

  • We’ll be working with a copyeditor at the end of the manuscript project.

  • As a writer, you stop seeing mistakes. It happens to all of us. You’re focusing on how the words sound in your head, not how they look on the page. If you haven’t experienced this, you probably haven’t written or rewritten as extensively as a professional would.

  • The best writers aren’t detailed enough to be copyeditors. It’s a different skill and, in my opinion, a detail-oriented personality type.

  • Most copyeditors — and I’d argue, the majority of writers — are not reporters. They don’t have the curiosity-driven need to know. They’ve probably never had a spouse tell them to stop going into “reporter mode.”

  • You need a reporter as a ghostwriter. They are observers and information gatherers and distillers. They ask questions and seek context. They gather a fuller story and seek out a through line of truth to compel your reader forward.

  • Newspaper journalists know how to create a story from nothing. Many radio, television, or magazine reporters rely on the previously published works of a newspaper reporter to understand what the heck is happening on the ground. Someone** had to be there first, had to gather the information and write the “first draft of history.”

    It’s a skill to take 50 pages of notes and distill it into 20 or 35 or 50 inches of newspaper copy. To get the crux of the story down to three paragraphs, which is all that makes it to the front page.**

** If you’ve read this far, you should at least drop me an email to say hello. And if you found a typo, send me a screenshot. Congratulations, you’re a natural copyeditor!