Frontline executive producer Raney Aronson-Rath was in her office late last summer when special projects editor Philip Bennett walked in. He’d just been watching the raw footage from Frontline’s upcoming documentary, “Putin’s Revenge,” a two-part program about … Read more
Transparency is pointless if no one is watching, but there’s no way a human reporter can keep up with the open data created by a modern city, let alone a country. Software agents, sometimes called bots, can monitor vast … Read more
Form follows function. Just what that axiom means, applied to journalism, was revealed to me by a man named Carl Newton, city editor of The Atlanta Journal when I arrived for my first newspaper job in 1971. Newton was … Read more
On my way into work at Medill Watchdog for the first time, I stopped at Hanig’s Shoe Store. It was February 1, 2011, part of a three-day storm in which more than 20 inches of snow fell on the … Read more
When a handful of students show up this fall for the new media innovation graduate program at Northeastern University, they’ll learn coding, information visualization, videography, database management—even game design. The Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism at the City University … Read more
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
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
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
From left, David Beard, Cheryl Fiandaca, and Seth Mnookin, speaking at the Nieman Foundation on May 1. Photo by Jonathan Seitz “One of the things that’s happening with Twitter is the whole process … Read more
In a breaking news situation, journalists get an adrenaline rush. There is a palpable eagerness to get the scoop, to be the first to bring the story to the public. In today’s world of social media, mobile phones, and real-time … Read more