Winter 2018

Covering Addiction

Cover for Winter 2018

These days, there’s no shortage of news documenting the toll of the opioid epidemic, from profiles of lives cut short by an overdose to features about the collateral damage inflicted on children to articles presenting grim statistics. However, it is much tougher to report on how the U.S. should address it—or, more specifically, how to best treat the 21 million Americans who struggle with addiction—and coverage of recovery itself remains rare and often tangential, contributing to the perception that overcoming addiction is the exception, not the norm. As media outlets shift from covering the problem of addiction to highlighting potential solutions and recovery, what’s needed is more perspective of people who have been drug-free for many years—and a focus not on what’s wrong with our treatment system, but how it can be fixed.

Download PDF

Cover

Watchdog

Features

The Race Beat, Revisited

By Features January 12, 2018

Shereen Marisol Meraji kicked off an episode of “Code Switch,” a podcast taglined “Race and Identity Remixed,” with a confession: “My mom’s Puerto Rican; my dad’s Iranian. And I, too, suffer from racial imposter syndrome.” Meraji went … Read more

How Independent Russian Newsrooms Keep Reporting

By Features November 3, 2017

In March Elena Milashina, a reporter for Russia’s leading independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta, was tipped off by a source about the suspicious death of a man in Chechnya. Through her reporting, Milashina, who had been covering Chechnya for more than a decade, learned that … Read more

Nieman Reports issue archive