Journalist’s Trade

In education, it’s the era of accountability. Teachers are tested to measure their ability to instruct. Students take standardized tests to find out what they have learned and where they…

Ten young teens draped themselves over chairs, forming a sloppy circle in the center of an empty middle-school classroom. I sat on the edge of the circle, an outsider looking…

Reporting the Story and Pitching in to Fix the Problem

Photo by Michelle Patterson, The Lexington Herald-Leader.Education writers often try to measure the success of their local schools by analyzing such things as test scores, class sizes and poverty rates.…

Pages from Gene Graham’s Nieman year sketchbook.Confession: I actually went to journalism school. And now I teach in one. But I’ve also spent plenty of time in newsrooms, a dual…

Before there were Internet news providers, newspapers rarely published the reporting they gathered more than twice a day. Before 24-hour cable news channels, even extraordinary footage usually had to wait…

Covering Breaking Foreign News for the Internet

My local newspaper, The Iowa City Press-Citizen, advertises: “Paper carriers are independent businesspersons, buying newspapers at wholesale, selling them at retail and pocketing the profits. And…the profits can be substantial.”…

There are some important lessons we’ve learned about how the coverage of violence—especially juvenile violence—influences the way many of us think about teenagers and crime. Related Article “What Numbers Can…

336% = the percentage increase in coverage of homicide on NBC, ABC, and CBS nightly news between 1990 and 1995. During this time, homicide arrests dropped by 13%.99% = the…