I was in Alaska on a Time assignment on the building of the Trans-Alaska pipeline and had been working like a dog in terrible conditions for a few weeks. I had scheduled a helicopter to pick me up from a … Read more
Rapid City, South Dakota To the Editor: I read with interest your “Watchdog” articles in Nieman Reports. I was a little disappointed Indians were excluded. Dealing day in and day out with sovereign nations requires us (the Indian press) to … Read more
“Bill & Son, 1962,” from ”Roy DeCarava: A Retrospective.” Roy DeCarava doesn’t occupy a space, he blends with it. But to say that his approach to photography is stealth-like is to attribute … Read more
In the mid-70’s there was a big press conference at the Waldorf Astoria in New York to announce that Raquel Welch was named an honorary spokesperson for the American Cancer Society. The New York press started asking her some nasty … Read more
The World Wide Web has been heralded as a medium that provides new ways to explore the world and communicate what one finds. Unfortunately, very little of the anticipated paradigm shift from conventional journalism to an alternative, multimedia practice has … Read more
After listening to a day and a half of debate and discussion about the role of watchdog journalism, I am more convinced than ever that this genre of aggressive reporting on issues of public importance is an overlooked and underdeveloped … Read more
It's Just Changing With the Times
In the next 50 pages Nieman Reports take stock of photojournalism today. While problems are noted, the report is positive. The articles and the photo essays by 10 Nieman Fellows demonstrate the special value of pictures to news. As noted photographer Edward Steichen summed it up at the dinner celebrating his 90th birthday in 1969: “The mission of photography is to explain man to man and each man to himself. And that is no mean function.” Read more
Readers are not sleeping through August, but they sometimes ask if copy editors are: “I want to register dismay about the errors in the July 30 lead story [on the budget agreement] on the front page. There’s a sentence that … Read more
CONFIDENTIAL March 11, 1966 Memo To: Ben Bradlee Ben Gilbert From: Phil Foisie Re: Copyreading 1. I define copyreading as the fastidious and methodical word-by-word check of copy for spelling, grammar, syntax, conformity of style, ascertainable factual … Read more
