For more than 30 years, author Barbara Ehrenreich has been trying to engage and enrage the public about the devastating impact of poverty in the United States. She’s had some success—2001’s “Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in … Read more
“Never stop asking for public documents,” says Boston Globe reporter Jenifer B. McKim, NF ’08, in the first of a series of Q. and A.'s with Nieman Fellows about watchdog reporting. “Sometimes a simple public records request can lead to stunning discoveries.” In McKim’s case, her request for reports about lead poisoning, made when she was a reporter at The Orange County Register in California, kicked off a two-year investigation into candy tainted with lead that prompted changes in state and federal laws. Read more
Marty Kaiser has been editor of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for 15 years, and during that time he has had to make a lot of cuts to his newsroom. The path he chose was to give up daily, incremental stories that don't move the ball, in favor of emphasizing watchdog stories that expose problems that need fixing. "What I love about it is that in a way it's the old-fashioned newspaper crusade," he says. "I think you should stand up for what you believe in and say that's what you're doing." Read more
Working with reporters across borders is the new frontier for accountability journalism, says Sheila S. Coronel, director of the Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. Born in Manila, Coronel co-founded the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism and served as its director for 17 years. Now blogging as the “WatchDog Watcher,” she argues that journalists can’t “follow the money” if they’re not going global with their reporting. Read more
Foreign policy has taken a back seat in the U.S. presidential election, especially the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. But reporters should at the very least press Barack Obama and Mitt Romney on a related domestic issue: the treatment of veterans. So asserts Kennedy School lecturer Juliette Kayyem, who notes that neither candidate is addressing the challenges facing those who bore the heaviest burden of war. Read more
The Obama administration is operating amid unprecedented secrecy—while attacking journalists trying to tell the public what they need to know. Read more
Dan Froomkin, formerly deputy editor of the Nieman Watchdog website, is now a contributor to Nieman Reports. His first piece examined the jobs crisis and what's missing from the job plans offered by the Romney and Obama campaigns. In his new piece, Froomkin talks to an election expert who suggests four voting metrics that can help reporters judge the fairness of elections. Read more
Photo by Arthur Rothstein. Courtesy of the Library of Congress. To the extent that there has been any attention paid to public policy issues amid all the mud-slinging in the 2012 … Read more
From liars' loans to liars' liens, the financial and foreclosure crisis has been one big story of banks defrauding their customers — a vast criminal enterprise. You wouldn't know it from a lot of the media coverage, though. Regulatory hero and criminologist William K. Black helps connect the dots. Read more
