Features

Independent Journalism Finds its Voice in Egypt

Independent Journalism Finds its Voice in Egypt

One day last May, Egyptian private television station TEN broadcast an interview with Justice Minister Mahfouz Saber in which he expressed the opinion that a law graduate whose father was…
Hedrick Smith: “If all we deliver is bad news, we lose credibility”

Hedrick Smith: “If all we deliver is bad news, we lose credibility”

He’s written thousands of articles for The New York Times, produced dozens of documentaries for PBS, and written seven books, but Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Hedrick Smith says his latest venture is among…
Is Solutions Journalism the Solution?

Is Solutions Journalism the Solution?

New media ventures are focusing on what’s going right in the world rather than what’s going wrong
Cory Haik: “Digital demands all shapes and forms”

Cory Haik: “Digital demands all shapes and forms”

When Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos bought The Washington Post in 2013, it was easy to assume that the newspaper’s digital content would be getting an update. One of…
Masha Gessen: "We've been thinking about terrorism all wrong"

Masha Gessen: “We’ve been thinking about terrorism all wrong”

In her new book, “The Brothers: The Road to an American Tragedy,” 2004 Nieman Fellow Masha Gessen recounts the lives of Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev up through the Boston Marathon…
Bassem Youssef: The Joke Is Mightier than the Sword

Bassem Youssef: The Joke Is Mightier than the Sword

When I was hosting my political satire show, “Al-Bernameg” (“The Program”), on Egyptian TV, I thought that making jokes made you immune to the risks many in the media faced.…
The Offending Art: Political Cartooning after the Charlie Hebdo Attacks

The Offending Art: Political Cartooning after the Charlie Hebdo Attacks

Philadelphia Daily News cartoonist Signe Wilkinson offered a multiple-choice test in 2010A black-robed, bearded figure hovers above Europe sprinkling drops of water, or maybe seeds, from a heart-shaped pouch. A…
A Blueprint for How to Make J-School Matter (Again)

A Blueprint for How to Make J-School Matter (Again)

In the fall of 2000, I sat in the large seminar room at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism listening to a lecture about whether journalists should be allowed…

Four Lessons from Buying and Running the Outer Banks Sentinel

When I informed friends and colleagues I was leaving as associate director of the Pew Research Center’s Journalism Project to buy a weekly in North Carolina’s Outer Banks there were…
Local Weeklies Are Covering the Communities Big Dailies Ignore

Local Weeklies Are Covering the Communities Big Dailies Ignore

Intermission was over and the house lights were about to go down for the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra’s performance of Brahms’s “German Requiem.” It was Saturday, October 4, 2014. Rebecca…