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Harvard’s House of Blues

By Features October 14, 2014

Legendary blues guitarist B.B. King told Nieman Fellows about his hardscrabble beginnings and played for them one afternoon at Lippmann House back in the fall of 1980. That visit came about through the efforts of Bulgarian journalist and … Read more

5 Questions for Jill Abramson, former editor of The New York Times

Features October 6, 2014

Former New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson is currently teaching narrative nonfiction at Harvard, where she received her undergraduate degree in 1976. She was an investigative reporter and deputy Washington bureau chief with the Wall Street Journal from 1988 to 1997 before moving to The Times, where she served as Washington bureau chief, managing editor and, ultimately, executive editor. As a Harvard senior, Abramson was arts editor of the Harvard Independent. She met with the current class of Nieman Fellows for a discussion about female newsroom leadership, the future of foreign correspondents and the Obama administration’s legal pursuit of journalists. Read more

Plus ça change…

By Features September 11, 2014

Of all the papers and newsmagazines in France, one in particular should have been well prepared for the challenges of this digital era: Libération. With its witty headlines, striking photo portraits, and its passionate and often provocative coverage of … Read more

“Thick Files and a Long Memory”

By Features September 11, 2014

Henry Constantin was a 22-year-old journalism student at a Cuban university in 2006 when he proposed a thesis critical of the country’s brand of reporting. He was promptly kicked out of the university. Two years later, he was … Read more

Facts, Not Opinions

By Features September 11, 2014

As recently as 2008, it was illegal for Cubans to own a cell phone and impossible for them to buy a computer. No independent journalist had a mobile device, and only a handful had a phone line at home. Read more

Island in the Storm

By Features September 11, 2014

In Cuba, it’s called “D-Day”—that hypothetical future date on which the Castro regime falls. D-Day is a date long-awaited by broad sectors of the population, the Cuban diaspora, media outlets around the world, and foreign correspondents based on the … Read more