ISSUE

Fall 2016

What Journalists Must Do Next

In the wake of the presidential election, as journalists continue to critique their coverage, the urgency for new approaches to political reporting has been underscored time and again. The insightful essays collected in Nieman Reports reflect on this historic campaign while pointing the way forward for journalism. Journalists, historians, and academics explore the issues, challenges, and opportunities—from newsroom diversity to fake news to community news outlets—that will inform approaches going forward.

Articles

Al Sharpton, Donald Trump, and the Black and White Truth

Election '16: Lessons for Journalism Politics

Al Sharpton, Donald Trump, and the Black and White Truth

Crucial facts about race in America have been overlooked in analyzing Trump's win

Issac J. Bailey

December 14, 2016

Niemans @ Work

Bill Church, NF ’16, seeks to join core values and new approaches as he guides newsrooms toward reinvention

What should newsrooms look like in the future?No one knows the answer.But there is energy in uncertainty. And the best way to find an answer is start an adventure. Even…

December 14, 2016

Floyd McKay, NF ’68, draws on his daily reporting for a book about an era that transformed the state of Oregon

Niemans @ Work

Floyd McKay, NF ’68, draws on his daily reporting for a book about an era that transformed the state of Oregon

When journalism becomes work—as opposed to adventure—it’s time to move on; that’s what I did after three decades as a reporter and commentator in print and television, at the Oregon…

December 14, 2016

Andrea McCarren, NF ’07, finds a four-legged friend is an asset for her reporting

Niemans @ Work

Andrea McCarren, NF ’07, finds a four-legged friend is an asset for her reporting

Over decades of reporting, my toolbox has evolved: from a pen and notebook to a smartphone, and for the last year, a 75-pound English Labrador retriever named Bunce.He’s named for…

Andrea McCarren

December 14, 2016

Get Serious About Getting Rid of Fake News

Election '16: Lessons for Journalism Technology

Get Serious About Getting Rid of Fake News

One way to think of the job journalism does is telling a community about itself, and on those terms the American media failed spectacularly this election cycle. That Donald Trump’s…

December 14, 2016

Earn Back the Right to Serve as Watchdogs

Election '16: Lessons for Journalism Politics

Earn Back the Right to Serve as Watchdogs

President-elect Donald Trump’s recent victory stunned a lot of Americans, not the least of which were members of the elite media, who couldn’t fathom the possibility that A) the so-called…

December 7, 2016

The Way Forward

Election '16: Lessons for Journalism From the Curator

The Way Forward

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…

Ann Marie Lipinski

November 30, 2016

Democracy at the Dinner Table

Sounding

Democracy at the Dinner Table

I often feel my job is to trick people into paying attention to the world around them. Beauty, light, and composition are my tools to draw one’s eye into the…

November 29, 2016

Four Steps to Strengthening Journalism's Role in Our Democracy

Election '16: Lessons for Journalism Politics

Four Steps to Strengthening Journalism’s Role in Our Democracy

Focus is one of journalism’s most important skills. It’s that separating the wheat from the chaff thing. In an age of distraction we need THAT skill now more than ever.…

Michael Oreskes

November 22, 2016

Election '16: Lessons for Journalism

Uncategorized

Election ’16: Lessons for Journalism

As journalists continue to critique their coverage of the presidential election, Nieman Reports is publishing an ongoing series of articles exploring the issues, challenges and opportunities—from newsroom diversity to fake…

November 22, 2016

What Went Wrong—and Right—with Campaign Coverage

Election '16: Lessons for Journalism Politics

What Went Wrong—and Right—with Campaign Coverage

There was a whole lot that went right in 2016 campaign coverage.If you were reading Slate’s Jamelle Bouie, PRRI’s Robert Jones, or New America’s Lee Drutman, you understood how race,…

November 22, 2016

Still An Outsider in Mainstream Journalism

Diversity Election '16: Lessons for Journalism

Still An Outsider in Mainstream Journalism

I watched election-night coverage on television with acquaintances from Europe, who seemed flummoxed by what was unfolding on the screen. I spent a lot of time explaining the Electoral College…

Ricardo Sandoval Palos

November 22, 2016

Journalists Need to Better Explain What Journalists Do … Including Me

Election '16: Lessons for Journalism Opinion

Journalists Need to Better Explain What Journalists Do … Including Me

Donald Trump’s precedent-breaking refusal to allow a small pool of journalists to cover his travels as president-elect has revealed some common ground in our otherwise fractured republic.Good, Trump supporters tell…

Michael Calderone

November 18, 2016

Creating Community-Centered, Not Candidate-Centered, Narratives

Election '16: Lessons for Journalism Local News

Creating Community-Centered, Not Candidate-Centered, Narratives

In covering the local election season in Dare County, North Carolina–best known as the home of the Outer Banks–journalists can’t be accused of paying too much attention to an unending…

November 18, 2016

The Problem with Polls Isn’t Technological, It’s Political

Election '16: Lessons for Journalism Politics

The Problem with Polls Isn’t Technological, It’s Political

“Election polling is in near crisis,” the political scientist Cliff Zukin wrote in The New York Times in June of 2015, a year and a half before the Dewey-Defeats-Truman of…

November 16, 2016

Predicting Outcomes Is Not Our Job

Election '16: Lessons for Journalism Politics

Predicting Outcomes Is Not Our Job

One thing I worry about is the seeming expectation that the press should have been able to predict the outcome of the election. And that “we got it wrong.” Clairvoyance is…

Keven Ann Willey

November 16, 2016

Relevance over Reach, Value over Volume

Election '16: Lessons for Journalism Politics

Relevance over Reach, Value over Volume

Among journalism’s many failings in this election, our greatest, I think, is this: We in liberal media (let’s admit that much, at least) abandoned and, in turn, were abandoned by…

November 15, 2016

All Journalism is Local

Election '16: Lessons for Journalism Local News

All Journalism is Local

Being a political animal, one of my first thoughts the morning after the election was, “Who’s going to run for President now?”You can rest assured that there are a dozen or…

November 14, 2016

Closing Gaps in the Name of Democracy

Election '16: Lessons for Journalism Politics

Closing Gaps in the Name of Democracy

Everyone has a story along the lines of mine. At a family gathering in October, I was chatting with a cousin about the campaign, and, since we didn’t see it…

November 13, 2016

Let the Interlopers In

Diversity Election '16: Lessons for Journalism

Let the Interlopers In

I remember the day the Los Angeles Times decided to hire me. I’d been freelancing for the paper out of California’s Central Valley. Ashley Dunn, then the metro editor, came…

November 12, 2016

Looking for “Whitelash”

Diversity Election '16: Lessons for Journalism

Looking for “Whitelash”

The signs that someone like Donald Trump was coming were right there, in online comments lousy with creatively spelled racial slurs that slipped past even the best filters. They were…

Wendi C. Thomas

November 11, 2016

Responding to Our Oral Culture

Election '16: Lessons for Journalism Opinion

Responding to Our Oral Culture

Sometime late last winter, I began to focus closely on what would happen in the primaries on Super Tuesday, March 1, 2016. I realized I really needed to get on…

November 11, 2016

How Collaborative Media Partnerships Can Help Rebuild Local and Regional Journalism

Election '16: Lessons for Journalism Local News

How Collaborative Media Partnerships Can Help Rebuild Local and Regional Journalism

The chasm between the coastal media centers and the country’s heartland is laid bare. Deep discontent, long simmering in the manufacturing Midwest and Appalachian coal country, went largely unrecognized until…

November 10, 2016

Jill Abramson: “You’ve Got to Get a Younger Generation in the Habit of Reading That Highest-Quality Journalism”

Live @ Lippmann

Jill Abramson: “You’ve Got to Get a Younger Generation in the Habit of Reading That Highest-Quality Journalism”

The former New York Times executive editor on why she admires BuzzFeed, misses Gawker, and the public holds the press in such low regard

October 26, 2016

The New Wisdom of the Crowd

Books

The New Wisdom of the Crowd

Scandinavian media giant Schibsted publishes Verdens Gang or VG, the number one online newspaper in Norway and the nation’s number two print daily. Schibsted’s approach to news is noteworthy because it “boasts…

October 18, 2016

Uncategorized

Seeking the Ultimate Complement

While Schibsted has capitalized on the power of “user connections”—fostering the development of networks that connect users—Anand’s research also underscored the importance of “product connections.” One example is the case…

October 18, 2016

Crowdfunding the News

Journalist’s Trade

Crowdfunding the News

Crowdfunding's financial contribution to journalism is still meager, but journalists are finding that crowdfunding can bring what Google and Facebook so often take away: the crowd and the funding

September 26, 2016

Access, Accountability Reporting and Silicon Valley

Watchdog

Access, Accountability Reporting and Silicon Valley

The first time I visited Facebook’s office in Washington, D.C., I was asked to sign a nondisclosure agreement. I didn’t. Then there was the time I got through an entire…

Adrienne LaFrance

August 17, 2016

Reporting on Islam

Uncategorized

Reporting on Islam

With Islam threaded through beats from foreign affairs to crime to education, journalists are stepping up efforts to provide nuanced coverage of Muslims and their religion