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From Shoe Leather to Big Data: ProPublica and the Future of Watchdog Journalism

Last year I attended a fascinating conference at Heidelberg University’s Center for American Studies entitled “From Pentagon Papers to WikiLeaks: A Transatlantic Conversation on the Public Right to Know.” Several…
June 13, 2013

Ask The Right Questions: MuckRock Makes FOIA Requests Easy

There is a thirst for investigative journalism in the great American traditions of the late I.F. Stone and Murrey Marder, but around the news industry the question asked is always…
June 13, 2013

Change Starts Small: The Texas Tribune Chooses Efficiency Over Size

Photo by Todd Wiseman“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed it is the only thing that ever has.” These words, from the…
June 13, 2013

Small Pieces, Loosely Joined: Nicco Mele on the End of Big News

Photo by Eden BrackstoneI am not a journalist. I’m a digital guy. I am well versed in the trends of newspapers’ decline, but at the age of 35 I’ve never…
June 13, 2013

Calm at the Kitchen Table: A Start-up Tracks Murder in Washington, D.C.

Photo by Douglas SondersThere’s an energy to big, busy newsrooms that’s unlike any other. Reporters and editors tapping away on keyboards, muttering through copy, interviews taking place, police scanners crackling,…
June 13, 2013

Playing Big: From the Chicago Tribune to Bloomberg News, Big Organziations Can Do Big Work

The battle raged over 29 words.In 1999, the Chicago Tribune published a five-part series, “Trial and Error,” that for the first time documented the incidence of prosecutorial misconduct nationally. One…
June 13, 2013

Face to Face with the Enemy: Photos from the World’s Wars

Click the image to meet the fighters. Photos by Karim Ben KhelifaUp until a few years ago, I had spent a decade and a half of my life behind the…
June 13, 2013

Stop the Press: Rupert Murdoch, the Leveson Inquiry, and Press Freedom in the U.K.

Photo of Murdoch by Kirsty Wigglesworth/The Assoicated PressOn a late March afternoon in 2002, 13-year-old British schoolgirl Amanda Jane “Milly” Dowler called her dad from her cell phone after school…
June 13, 2013

Staggering Drunks and Fiscal Cliffs: How Bloomberg Businessweek Uses Metaphors in the News

Illustration by Harry CampbellIn 2008, the year of the financial crisis, BusinessWeek magazine pictured Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke as a driver careening down a mountain road, then as Vladimir…
June 13, 2013

Writing Naked: Donald Hall on Poetry and Metaphor in Journalism (Video)

The Complete InterviewOn March 29, 2013, retired Concord Monitor editor Mike Pride, NF ’85, sat down with his friend Donald Hall, the former U.S. poet laureate, for a videotaped conversation…
June 13, 2013