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
In October 2010, I was having dinner with Paul Salopek, sorting through the news industry’s vanishing support for foreign reporting, his work. “I have an idea,” he said, and on the back of our receipt he drew a crude map … Read more
In their press freedom ranking of 180 countries, Reporters Without Borders this year named Norway its valedictorian. So free is the country from censorship, political pressure, or violence against journalists, that the headline atop the annual … Read more
For the first time in his long career, Academy Award winner Errol Morris has made a film that no one will distribute. Perhaps distributors don’t like the documentary. Perhaps they don’t like the subject—Stephen … Read more
How are great journalists made? Whatever your image of an inspired origin story, it is unlikely to feature a young reporter sitting on the floor of her apartment reading a weekly from Omaha. But that was … Read more
I was a kid, really—24 or 25—walking up Chicago’s Michigan Avenue on my way to the bus when a man twice my age blocked my path. He was dressed in the uniform of the business elite and held out … Read more
On a sunny Friday in May, a sweetly solemn ceremony unfolded on the grounds of Harvard’s Lippmann House as Nieman Fellows gathered for a class reunion. Missing was Anja Niedringhaus, a treasured classmate and Associated Press photographer … Read more
I first read the lie under a competitor’s byline: the results of DNA testing on a rape case I was covering. My reporting partner and I didn’t know it was false but believed we’d been beaten on a story. We … Read more
For many mornings on my way into the Chicago Tribune newsroom, I passed by an Arthur Miller quote engraved in the lobby: “A good newspaper, I suppose, is a nation talking to itself.” That sentiment, as sturdy as the travertine … Read more
In this centennial year of the Pulitzer Prize, here are some works I’ve been thinking about: Kevin Boyle’s “Arc of Justice,” a powerful narrative about murder and racism in Jazz Age Detroit; Jerry Mitchell’s investigations of civil rights cold … Read more
