Winter 2014

The State of Journalism in China

The Communist Party has long striven to control freedom of speech in China. Websites from around the world are blocked. Major social media cannot be accessed, and advanced software is used to delete “sensitive” entries from the Internet. Domestic journalists who step over the invisible line of what’s permissible face being fired or even arrested, while foreign journalists face various forms of government intimidation. How reporters are trying to work around China’s resurgent censorship, 25 years after Tiananmen.

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Cover

Command and Control

By Paul Mooney• International Journalism• February 18, 2014

Eluding the “Ministry of Truth”

By Anne Henochowicz• International Journalism• February 6, 2014

RELATED ARTICLES Command and Control By Paul Mooney Moral Hazard By Yang XiaoInternet censorship in China is not simply matter of blocking foreign websites and deleting anything deemed harmful, nor is the … Read more

The Secret Life of Keywords

By Qian Gang• International Journalism• January 31, 2014

I became a journalist in 1979. Back in those days, two basic skills were required of any journalist: reporting and writing. Three decades later, in an era of dramatic technological changes, these basic skills alone are no longer sufficient. Read more

Technology, Transparency and Traditional Media

By Luo Changping• International Journalism• February 10, 2014

As the profitability of traditional Chinese media plummets, journalists are increasingly beginning to transform themselves, with the acceptance of bribes for writing positive stories becoming more and more common among news outlets. Social media have … Read more

Under Pressure

By Hu Yong• International Journalism• January 30, 2014

Two-thousand-and-three was a milestone year for investigative journalism in China. Some media organizations had been transformed from Communist Party propaganda tools into market-oriented news outlets. The Party line had weakened while market influences strengthened, leaving many journalists with an … Read more

Follow the Money

By David Barboza• Journalist’s Trade• January 31, 2014

In the fall of 2011, while researching a story on China’s business elites for The New York Times, I made a startling find: a set of corporate documents that linked the relatives of then Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao … Read more

Commerce & Corruption

By Hu Shuli• International Journalism• January 30, 2014

Technology development has been reshaping the media industry worldwide. In developed countries like the United States, traditional media companies felt the shock brought on by new technology several years ago. The global financial crisis made their survival even more … Read more

“Stigma Rent-seeking” on China’s Internet

By Zhou Haiyan• International Journalism• February 5, 2014

In October 2013, journalist Chen Yongzhou of the New Express Daily was detained and arrested after he reported alleged corruption at Zoomlion, a state-owned company. His paper’s front-page pleas for his release drew worldwide attention and sympathy from the … Read more

Moral Hazard

By Yang Xiao• International Journalism• January 31, 2014

In China, May has 35 days. All mention of June 4th, the day in 1989 on which the Tiananmen Square massacre took place, is forbidden. So Chinese journalists and … Read more

Up Close and Personal

By Evan Osnos• International Journalism• January 31, 2014

Watch video of Osnos’s Morris Lecture, from which this essay was adapted In 1948, the Harvard Sinologist John King Fairbank wrote, “China is a journalist’s dream and a statistician’s nightmare.” It was, he explained, a … Read more

Evan Osnos: The Challenges of Covering China

By Jonathan Seitz• International Journalism• February 12, 2014

Evan Osnos, who covered China for eight years with the Chicago Tribune and The New Yorker, spoke about the difficulty of covering modern China in the … Read more

About the Cover

By Jan Gardner• Features• February 6, 2014

For the cover of the new issue of Nieman Reports, we wanted to say something intriguing about the state of … Read more

Download “The State of Journalism in China”

Features• February 6, 2014

“The State of Journalism in China” looks at how journalists in China work around the Communist Party’s efforts to rein in free speech. Read more

Storyboard

Master of the Craft

By Anne Hull• Features• February 19, 2014

Through his scrupulously researched books chronicling the rise to power of President Lyndon Johnson and New York urban planner Robert Moses, Robert A. Caro, NF ’66, set a new standard for political biography. Almost 40 years into his multi-volume … Read more

A Conversation and a Box of Kleenex

By Lea Thau• Journalist’s Trade• February 6, 2014

If a story echoes in the woods and no one hears it, is it still a story? Well, if it’s a written story, perhaps yes, but a spoken story needs an audience, not just to affirm its existence but … Read more

Stand and Deliver

By Alfredo Corchado• Journalist’s Trade• February 6, 2014

So, what’s your story?” asked Lea Thau, creator of “The Moth Radio Hour.” “I understand you came from Mexico as a young kid.” Thus began a series of questions to figure out whether I had a story to tell … Read more

Feature

The Future Is Ours

By Laura Wides-Muñoz• Features• January 31, 2014

In 1808, as Napoleon’s forces marched across southern Spain, a group of Spanish exiles set up shop across the Atlantic in New Orleans. There, they capitalized on Louisiana’s newly acquired First Amendment rights and churned out a four-page bilingual … Read more

Watchdog

Clear and Present Danger

By Geoffrey King• Watchdog• February 10, 2014

In the fall of 2013, the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) quietly began booting up its Utah Data Center, a sprawling 1.5 million-square-foot facility designed to store and analyze the vast amounts of electronic data the spy agency gathers … Read more

Nimble with Numbers

By Susan Smith Richardson• Watchdog• January 29, 2014

John A. McDermott founded The Chicago Reporter in 1972. Despite his best intentions, the Reporter is still around today. A civil rights activist who stood with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. during his 1966 fair housing campaign in … Read more

Cold, Hard Facts to Cold, Hard Cash

By Lorie Hearn• Watchdog• January 29, 2014

inewsource grew out of the desperation that was sweeping newsrooms across the country in 2009. I was a senior editor for metro and investigations at The San Diego Union-Tribune, and I’d spent way too much time discussing potential layoffs. Read more