ISSUE

Summer 1998

Photojournalism Dead? It's Just Changing With the Times

In the next 50 pages Nieman Reports take stock of photojournalism today. While problems are noted, the report is positive. The articles and the photo essays by 10 Nieman Fellows demonstrate the special value of pictures to news. As noted photographer Edward Steichen summed it up at the dinner celebrating his 90th birthday in 1969: “The mission of photography is to explain man to man and each man to himself. And that is no mean function.”

Articles

Visual Journalism

Michele McDonald

Alabanians show reports of beatings by Serbs in Kosovo.These photos were taken in August, 1993 in Serbia, Bosnia and Kosovo for The Boston Globe. Reporter Sally Jacobs and I were…

Visual Journalism

David Turnley

© David Turnley/Black Star, “In Times of War & Peace,” 1996RELATED ARTICLE“The Best Picture I Never Took”– David TurnleyIn his introduction to “In Times Of War And Peace,” a book…

Visual Journalism

Inner Eye

A Life-Long Strategy for Learning Photojournalism

Bill Kuykendall

Visual Journalism

Pictures Dominate, Words Come Second

In editing our documentaries, the picture leads. Writing the narration is literally the last thing I do. That doesn’t mean I don’t have concrete ideas about the story, especially since…

Visual Journalism

People Without People

Alan Berner/The Seattle Times.What is “People Without People?” For me it is the sense of people without them being there. It’s the part representing the whole. It’s the significant detail…

Visual Journalism

Interaction

Mary Beth Meehan/The Providence Journal-Bulletin.As a documentary photographer, I am most interested in using the medium to describe the relationships that people have—with their environment, with each other. I’m fascinated…

Mary Beth Meehan

Visual Journalism

Honest Emotion

Photo by Torsten Kjellstrand/The Herald.Emotion is the language of documentary photography. Without it, a picture has little value, except possibly as evidence in court. Most of us look for a…

Torsten Kjellstrand

Visual Journalism

Micha Bar-Am

These photographs are from “Israel: A Photobiography, The First Fifty Years,” by Micha Bar-Am, a 1986 Nieman Fellow (Simon & Schuster, 1998). The photos shown, all © Micha Bar-Am/Magnum, are…

Visual Journalism

Trials With Editors

Stan Grossfeld, a 1992 Nieman Fellow, has an enviable job as a photojournalist. An Associate Editor of The Boston Globe, he is free to go wherever his creative instincts lead…

Visual Journalism

The Best Picture I Never Took

It was in the 1972 campaign, during a George McGovern rally in a city long forgotten, that I saw a photograph I ache to have made. In shirtsleeves, the Democratic…

Frank Van Riper

Visual Journalism

The Best Picture I Never Took

In 1986, during the state of emergency in South Africa, South African photographer Peter Magubane and I had been hidden under the seat of a taxi-combi that took us into…

Visual Journalism

Hard Times Abroad

Time magazine sent Chris Morris to Albania last summer to get pictures of the election there. Everything worked out fine, they had the page all set and laid out. At…

Visual Journalism

The Role of the Picture Editor

Georgia O’Keeffe holds her favorite stone from her rock collection. Abiquiu, New Mexico. 1966. She confessed that she stole the stone. © John Loengard.It is not important if photographs are…

Visual Journalism

The Best Picture I Never Took

It was about 1:30 a.m. on a day in 1982 when I awoke to a second alarm of a fire on Newbury Street in Boston’s Back Bay. I was racing…

Visual Journalism

Changing With the Times

Working in a More Subdued World, Photojournalists Produce Outstanding Pictures Reflective of the Times

Vincent Alabiso

Visual Journalism

AP’s Policy Banning Photo Manipulation

In 1990, as The Associated Press made its transition to digital processing of its images, Vincent Alabiso, Executive Photo Editor, released its unequivocal internal policy regarding photo manipulation. “The straightforward…

Visual Journalism

Lester Sloan

These photos are of men who attended the Million Man March on Washington in 1995. The event was defined by the media in terms of numbers, but to me it…

Visual Journalism

Nancy Rhoda

The simplest outing can turn into a nightmare for Alice Williams. Her son Joey’s fantasy life takes over as he demands a haircut like that of the Statue of Liberty.…

Visual Journalism

Eli Reed

A girl poses at the Benaco refugee camp, Tanzania, 1994.The Benaco refugee camp was set up in Tanzania in late April or early May of 1994, one of the first…

Visual Journalism

Feminine Touch

Growing Number of Women Photographers Are Making a Difference

Visual Journalism

The Best Picture I Never Took

I was in Alaska on a Time assignment on the building of the Trans-Alaska pipeline and had been working like a dog in terrible conditions for a few weeks. I…

Visual Journalism

Roy DeCarava Retrospective

“Bill & Son, 1962,” from ”Roy DeCarava: A Retrospective.”Roy DeCarava doesn’t occupy a space, he blends with it. But to say that his approach to photography is stealth-like is to…

Visual Journalism

The Best Picture I Never Took

In the mid-70’s there was a big press conference at the Waldorf Astoria in New York to announce that Raquel Welch was named an honorary spokesperson for the American Cancer…

Visual Journalism

The Web Waits for the Photographer, Too

The World Wide Web has been heralded as a medium that provides new ways to explore the world and communicate what one finds. Unfortunately, very little of the anticipated paradigm…

Visual Journalism

Summer 1998: Photojournalism Introduction

It's Just Changing With the Times In the next 50 pages Nieman Reports take stock of photojournalism today. While problems are noted, the report is positive. The articles and the…

Robert H. Phelps

Nieman Notes

Carole Kneeland—Model of Excellence

Carole Kneeland was a seasoned reporter when she arrived as news director at KVUE-TV in Austin nine years ago. But she didn’t have a day’s worth of newsroom management experience.…

Nieman Notes

From Tiananmen To Harvard Square

One of the things I wondered about when I returned to Boston after 12 years abroad was how I could possibly keep up with the ever-evolving story of China’s emergence…

Philip Cunningham

Books

Who Knows Better—Critics or the People?

America’s Most Wanted, 1994. Oil and acrylic on canvas. 24 x 32. By permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux.“Painting By Numbers” is a book about art and freedom, authority and…

Books

A Newsman’s Style as Envoy in Africa

When one thinks of how an ambassador’s career gets started, a rocky beach and seagulls don’t likely come to mind. But this is how Smith Hempstone, a former Editor-in-Chief of…

Watchdog

CNN’s Tightened Check On News Breaks

A news organization that parrots somebody else’s reporting has to feel as badly, if not more badly, when the original report is wrong than the originating news organization. There are…

Books

Scoop Artist Who Isn’t a Journalist

“Born to see; meant to look.” That’s the personal motto taken from Goethe’s “Faust” that Peter Drucker, the legendary thinker and management expert, uses to describe his profession. An observer,…

Books

Questioning the Press’s Adversarial Tone

The Argument Culture: Moving from Debate to DialogueDeborah TannenRandom House. 348 Pages. $25.“The Battle of the Sexes,” “Telecommunications Price Wars,” “Democrats Send Clinton into Battle for Second Term,” “A Classic…

Books

Cloning, a Great Story, but Know What You Are Writing

Remaking Eden: Cloning and Beyond in a Brave New WorldLee M. SilverAvon Books. 317 Pages. $25.Those biologists who tend toward irreverence say their conservative peers have one standard response to…

Harold M. Schmeck Jr.

Technology

On-line Profits From News Must Wait

In the three years or so that media organizations have operated on-line news sites very few, if any, have made a profit. There aren’t many success stories to highlight. The…

Visual Journalism

Frank Van Riper

RELATED ARTICLE“The Best Picture I Never Took”– Frank Van RiperIn combining my talents as both a writer and photographer I am doing something unusual and, I think, important in the…

Visual Journalism

Stanley Forman

I was on vacation from my job at WCVB-TV Boston in September 1986 and had spent the early evening playing cards. At 11:30 I quit to pick up a friend…

Visual Journalism

Steve Northup

These pictures were made in November of l972, about the time Nixon was getting re-elected. The Indians, marching as part of the American Indian Movement, went to Washington and simply…

Visual Journalism

Stan Grossfeld

RELATED ARTICLE“The Best Picture I Never Took”– Stan GrossfeldIt’s a familiar refrain: kids having kids. There’s an unexpected twist here, however. Christina and Allan “are white kids in a nice…

Visual Journalism

‘Secret’ Behind TV Station’s Photos

By getting down to eye level, a KUSA photographer gives a sense of the action and the emotions of wheelchair athletes.Denver’s KUSA-TV has been named Television News Photography Station of…

Visual Journalism

Get the Picture

A Personal History of Photojournalism

Opinion

Tobacco and the American Civil Liberties Union

ACLU’s Charges New York To the Editor: Morton Mintz’s latest diatribe against the ACLU only serves to degrade and debase the standards of your magazine, whose stated purpose is “to…

Opinion

Indians Left Out

Rapid City, South DakotaTo the Editor:I read with interest your “Watchdog” articles in Nieman Reports. I was a little disappointed Indians were excluded. Dealing day in and day out with…

From the Curator

The Daily Work of the Media

After listening to a day and a half of debate and discussion about the role of watchdog journalism, I am more convinced than ever that this genre of aggressive reporting…

Journalist’s Trade

Progress by Washington Post Copyeditors: 1997

Readers are not sleeping through August, but they sometimes ask if copy editors are:“I want to register dismay about the errors in the July 30 lead story [on the budget…

Geneva Overholser

Watchdog

How to Keep the Watchdogs Watching

First Nieman Conference on Aggressive Reporting Produces Scores of Ideas, Some Conflicting

Journalist’s Trade

Progress by Washington Post Copyeditors: 1966

CONFIDENTIALMarch 11, 1966Memo To: Ben BradleeBen GilbertFrom: Phil FoisieRe: Copyreading1. I define copyreading as the fastidious and methodical word-by-word check of copy for spelling, grammar, syntax, conformity of style, ascertainable…

Philip M. Foisie

Journalist’s Trade

Dramatizing a Story Through ‘High Density’

At a February 20, 1998, seminar with Nieman Fellows, David Halberstam was asked how he combined research with interviews and how he avoided becoming overwhelmed by the record in writing…

David Halberstam

Journalist’s Trade

How VOA Reported Sex Charges

The Voice of America newsroom in Washington.RELATED ARTICLE“CNN’s Tightened Check On News Breaks”– Eason JordanWhat have listeners abroad been hearing from the Voice of America about the sexual charges against…

Journalist’s Trade

Legacy of Diana and the British Press

In July 1991, the editor of The Daily Telegraph hauled me into his office for a severe dressing down. My offense? I had written to an aide of the Duchess…

Watchdog

Summer 1998: Watchdog Journalism Introduction

Here is a report on the first Nieman conference on watchdog journalism, which was held on May 2, 1998, at Harvard University. The Spring 1998 edition of Nieman Reports laid…

Robert H. Phelps