When Evan Gershkovich was freed, the journalism community exhaled. The Wall Street Journal reporter, detained for over a year on sham espionage charges, was released in a prisoner swap, ending a determined campaign symbolized by the “Free Evan Now” buttons … Read more
Mary Knoblauch, my first full-time editor, died recently. There was a photograph at the wake showing her with a small team of reporters celebrating a series that won some awards. I am one of the reporters in the photo, but … Read more
Michelle Ye Hee Lee has sharp memories of her first traumatic assignment. It was 2011, and U.S. Rep. Gabby Giffords had been shot in a suburban Arizona supermarket parking lot, the victim of a gunman whose rampage that January morning … Read more
If I asked you to name a country where press freedom has grown stronger in recent years, could you? How about countries where press freedom is increasingly under attack? If you’re still struggling with the … Read more
When I asked Brent Renaud where he wanted his picture taken, he chose a stairwell lined with Nieman Fellows’ photographs at Harvard’s Lippmann House. He was giving a big talk that night during his own fellowship year, and I was … Read more
Jonas Heese was skeptical. The Harvard Business School professor had heard the standard claims: When local newspapers close down, corporate corruption goes up. Yes, there was anecdotal evidence that national media could act as a corrective — perhaps a Wall … Read more
The word had so thoroughly infiltrated the language that I no longer noticed it. Then one afternoon, walking across a windy plaza, it brought me to a full stop. A coffee shop had printed it on a long, wide banner, … Read more
I traveled once to Tripoli to interview Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi. Colleagues and I met him in a Bedouin tent under a full moon on the grounds of Bab al-Azizya, his walled barracks. He was a man who both courted … Read more
Dear Journalism. Those two words formed the silent call I heard throughout the summer as anguish over George Floyd’s killing and an amplified Black Lives Matter movement forced a news industry reckoning. Yes, there was deep pain and disillusionment … Read more
Goenawan Mohamad, the Indonesian journalist and poet, had considerable impact on the members of my Nieman class. His parents had suffered exile to an internment camp; his father was later executed for political activism. Tempo, the magazine he founded, … Read more