ISSUE

Spring 2017

A New Focus

Newsroom diversity—racial, ethnic, gender and socioeconomic—has received a lot of attention since last year’s election, but a lack of equity and inclusivity among those who work behind the documentary camera remains an often overlooked problem. With the recognition that, when both photographers in the field and photo editors in the newsroom are primarily white and male, news images reflect that singular perspective, a growing number of individuals and organizations are working to address the issue.

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Articles

Niemans @ Work

Sound Business: Mary Meehan, NF ’16, masters the art of storytelling on radio after a long career in print

In Powell County, Kentucky,  a nurse, a preacher, and a physician assistant challenged deep religious beliefs to save their community. In the process they also taught me both the importance…
Mary Meehan
May 19, 2017
A Winning Turnaround: Betsy O’Donovan, NF ’13, is leading the charge to reverse the deficit at a college newspaper
Niemans @ Work

A Winning Turnaround: Betsy O’Donovan, NF ’13, is leading the charge to reverse the deficit at a college newspaper

I became executive director at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill’s Daily Tar Heel in August 2016, at a make-or-break moment for our nonprofit newspaper. We’d lost $272,000 in the…
Betsy O'Donovan
May 18, 2017
How News Flows on Social Media
Books

How News Flows on Social Media

Zeynep Tufekci is a scholar of social movements and the technologies on which they rely. In “Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest,” published May 16…
Zeynep Tufekci
May 16, 2017
Images that Offer Fresh Takes on Minority Communities
Diversity in Journalism Visual Journalism

Images that Offer Fresh Takes on Minority Communities

[sidebar style=”right” head=”Related”]Why We Need More Visual Journalists and Editors of ColorBy Tara Pixley[/sidebar]The best visual journalism displays the human condition as honestly and thoroughly as possible. The photographers highlighted…
May 15, 2017
Why We Need More Visual Journalists and Editors of Color
Diversity in Journalism Visual Journalism

Why We Need More Visual Journalists and Editors of Color

A tall man—handgun tucked in his waistband and face wrapped in a shirt leaving only his eyes visible—stares at the journalists staring at him. He is looting a Ferguson, Missouri gas…
Tara Pixley
May 15, 2017
Border Patrol: Panama Papers veteran Wahyu Dhyatmika, NF ’15, finds a way forward with another cross-border investigative story
Niemans @ Work

Border Patrol: Panama Papers veteran Wahyu Dhyatmika, NF ’15, finds a way forward with another cross-border investigative story

Being an investigative reporter used to be a lonely job. You rarely talk about your story to colleagues in your newsroom, let alone a journalist from another publication. You guard…
Wahyu Dhyatmika
May 15, 2017
The Sting of the Lie
From the Curator

The Sting of the Lie

I first read the lie under a competitor’s byline: the results of DNA testing on a rape case I was covering. My reporting partner and I didn’t know it was…
Ann Marie Lipinski
May 10, 2017
Sensor Journalism: Reporting Opportunities and Ethical Concerns
Features

Sensor Journalism: Reporting Opportunities and Ethical Concerns

On October 11, 2011, Florida Highway Patrol trooper Donna Jane Watts clocked a car driving down the Florida turnpike at 120 miles per hour, well over the zone’s 70 mph…
Eryn Carlson
May 3, 2017
Rethinking the White House Beat
Features

Rethinking the White House Beat

Frederik Obermaier and Bastian Obermayer, reporters on one of 2016’s most important news stories, the Panama Papers, recently issued a challenge in an essay published in The Guardian to their…
Debra Adams Simmons
April 25, 2017
Sounding

The Power in Sports

Two years ago, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette gave me the reporting opportunity of a lifetime—go to the Dominican Republic and Cuba to write about the dynamics of the baseball culture on each…
J. Brady McCollough
April 20, 2017
Can News Literacy Be Taught?
Features

Can News Literacy Be Taught?

In the run-up to last year’s presidential election, Kennady Wade found herself challenging her peers on the dubious stories they posted on social media, like links to obscure conservative blogs that…
John Dyer
April 14, 2017
S. Mitra Kalita: “‘They don’t know, they don’t show’—those words [from ‘Boyz n the Hood’] just penetrated me. … Those words have been the refrain of my career”
Live @ Lippmann

S. Mitra Kalita: “‘They don’t know, they don’t show’—those words [from ‘Boyz n the Hood’] just penetrated me. … Those words have been the refrain of my career”

A leader in digital innovation and editorial strategy, S. Mitra Kalita has had reporting jobs and leadership roles at news organizations spanning multiple platforms and locales, from New York to…
April 6, 2017