ISSUE

Spring 1999

Educating Journalists

In asking young journalists to write about their experiences, what we wanted to provide was a forum in which they could express their views, concerns and ideas about the way in which journalism is practiced today. What we found as their articles arrived is that these young journalists raise questions that are relevant for seasoned journalists to ponder. As one correspondent writes: “I know in the future…I’ll take opportunities to listen to interns and recent college graduates who other folks in the newsroom might dismiss as starry-eyed idealists. I hope that listening to their perspectives will help me remember why I chose to become a journalist in the first place.”

Articles

The Price of Hope: Investigating Disparities Among Rich and Poor Schools

Photo by Diedra Laird, The Charlotte Observer.For years, parents and educators in poverty-ridden pockets of the South sensed the public schools were shortchanging their children. And they were right. Their…

Using Education Data Effectively

After two years of traveling the country working with reporters and editors on computer-assisted reporting techniques, it was clear that no story invokes more fear than the dreaded annual school…

A Newspaper’s Report Cards Offer Revealing Insights into How Well Schools are Doing

Parents stand up to speak at school board meetings, clutching a copy of the newspaper. The dog-eared newsprint is the source of research that buttresses their comments.School officials pore over…

Using Education Data to Build A Story’s Foundation

Parents assist children in a fourth grade math class. Photo by Bill Batson, The Omaha World-Herald.For at least a decade before The Omaha World-Herald published its five-part series “The Learning…

Spring 1999: The Education Beat Introduction

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…

By Being There, a Reporter Captures a Rare View of Middle School

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…

On-Line Journalism: Frustrations Along the Road to the Future

I knocked on the coach’s office door in the visitor’s clubhouse at Durham Bulls Athletic Park.“Come in,” said Stump Merrill, the gruff manager of the Columbus (Ohio) “While in the…

A Dual-Track Approach to Tackling The Topic of Reading

Reporting the Story and Pitching in to Fix the Problem

Using the Realities of the Newsroom To Train Journalists

For two days in late September, Bebe sold the crack cocaine rocks known as “Cookies” in the pouring rain—cold and alone. While other kids were in school that morning, Bebe…

The Learning Gap: Highlighting Teachers’ Competency

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.…

Teaching Journalism by Adhering to Unchanging Standards

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…

Falling in Love With Words and How Journalists Use Them

I don’t particularly like thinking about what I might do after I earn my master’s degree in journalism. J-school, for all the work and worry, is more fun than any…

When Mediocrity Beckons

A newsroom for journalism students. Photo courtesy Medill School of Journalism.Most of us know the frustration of desire outpacing ability. But what about coping with the reverse? What happens if…

International Journalists Use Internet Technology to Breach Borders

A journalist in Zimbabwe, researching a story with ties to Sweden, needed to contact an investigative reporter in that Scandinavian country, though he knew no one there. In Montreal, a…

Restoring a Sense of What It Means To Be a Journalist

Most people instinctively want to teach others what they know. And journalists are no exception. It is our job, after all, to share with our readers, viewers and listeners what…

Golf Offers a Window on Our Changing World

Preferred Lies and Other Tales: Skimming the Cream of a Life in SportsJack WhitakerSimon and Schuster. 272 Pages. $24.There is a movie scene that haunts just about every serious sportswriter…

Stitching a Community Together With A Newspaper Staffed by Young Journalists

Brandon Tubbs working as a mentor to a student from the PACERS Cooperative. © Photo courtesy PACERS Photography, Program for Rural Services and Research.Shawn “Sham” Franks, a sophomore at Oakman…

When Numbers Talk, Journalists Help People Listen

Venezuelan reporter Carlos Subero constructed his own databases to analyze politicians’ performances.Swedish reporter Stefan Lisinski exposed questionable practices involving bankrupt companies by using a massive Swedish database of information on…

A Desire to Tell People What They Ought to Know

Salant, CBS, and The Battle for the Soul of American Journalism: The Memoirs of Richard S. SalantCompiled and Edited by Susan and Bill BuzenbergEastview Press. 331 Pages. $27.Dick Salant, the…

Spring 1999: Introduction

In asking young journalists to write about their experiences, what we wanted to provide was a forum in which they could express their views, concerns and ideas about the way…

Riding the Digital Wave Into Journalism

Is It the Best Wave for Students to Catch?

Hong Kong’s Press

While Debate Rages About Media Ethics, Self-Censorship Quietly Thrives

Race Intrudes on a Newspaperman’s Career

Ted Poston: Pioneering American JournalistKathleen HaukeUniversity of Georgia Press. 326 Pages. $29.95.In today’s age of hyper-speed journalism, where news cycles change hourly and consumers can get stories at the click…

Can Business Reporting Become a Positive New Force In Foreign News Coverage?

This is excerpted from a December 18 Nieman seminar in which Orville Schell, Dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at Berkeley, offered his perspective on foreign news coverage.Question: Why…

The Culture of Secrecy: Can It Be Cracked Open?

Secrecy: The American ExperienceDaniel Patrick MoynihanYale University Press. 262 Pages. $22.50.A Culture of Secrecy: The Government Versus the People’s Right to KnowEdited by Athan G. TheoharisUniversity Press of Kansas. 245…

Are Minorities Getting a Fair Shot At Journalism Jobs?

The Answer is “No”: Now What Can be Done?

What Difference Would It Make If Reporters Knew a War Crime When They Saw One?

This article is excerpted from a paper prepared by Roy Gutman, a correspondent for Newsday, for the International Studies Association conference held in Vienna, Austria in September 1998.Human rights abuses,…

Foreign Correspondents Transform Their Coverage Into Books

Rwandan refugees board a cargo plane in the Democratic Republic of the Congo that will take them back to Kigali, Rwanda. A mother sits next to her daughter who died…

Unraveling the Mystery of Vanishing Foreign News

Compassion Fatigue: How the Media Sell Disease, Famine, War and DeathSusan D. MoellerRoutledge. 390 Pages. $27.50.Any reporter working in the twilight of the Cold War and into the 1990’s knows…

Competing with Cyberspace: The Key is Reliability

The Virginia Press Association invited me to their annual meeting to talk about the future. Specifically, they wanted to talk about how newspapers compete in the world of cyberspace. The…

If Birds Were Reporters, What Would Their Eyes Reveal?

This image of Birkenau death camp taken in August 1944 shows prisoners lined up at gas chambers and other parts of the camp. Though photographed from an airplane, the image…

Spring 1999: Books Introduction

As foreign reporting struggles to find its foothold in the news that Americans watch, listen to and read, reporters write books about human tragedies they observe. They hope someone will…

Spring 1999: International Journalism Introduction

From Hong Kong—A report on the press after China’s returnFrom the United States—Reports on technological tools to help journalists track international stories from their office computersPeter Stein, Managing Editor of…

A Photographer Unites Generations With His Camera

Donny’s Girl Photos by Steven RubinThese photographs are from an ongoing project that I began 16 years ago, a visual chronicle of a town—West Athens, Maine—and its people. Returning there…

The Nieman Network Works in Wondrous Ways

Nearly four years have passed since my class toasted many farewells at the elegant Harvard Faculty Club. Our Curator, Bill Kovach, had the last word: “You are part of a…