ISSUE

Summer 2014

Where Are the Women?

Despite making up half the population and receiving the majority of communication degrees, women currently lead only three of the nation’s top 25 newspapers. What’s lost when women aren’t leading? What can be done to increase their ranks at the top?

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Articles

Discovering His Voice
Nieman Notes

Discovering His Voice

Television reporter and anchor Norman Robinson retired in June, ending a 42-year career in journalism. He spent the past 23 years at WDSU in New Orleans, where he was anchor…
Norman Robinson
September 30, 2014
Scott Stossel on Taking Ideas Journalism Online at The Atlantic (Complete Transcript)
Uncategorized

Scott Stossel on Taking Ideas Journalism Online at The Atlantic (Complete Transcript)

Scott Stossel, editor of The Atlantic, has reason to be nervous. That’s partly because of his personality—detailed in “My Age of Anxiety: Fear, Hope, Dread, and the Search for Peace…
Scott Stossel
September 29, 2014
Where Are the Women?
Diversity

Where Are the Women?

At a time when women head fewer major U.S. newspapers than they did 10 years ago, there is a place where women run not only some of the nation’s leading…
Anna Griffin
September 11, 2014
Plus ça change...
Features

Plus ça change…

Of all the papers and newsmagazines in France, one in particular should have been well prepared for the challenges of this digital era: Libération. With its witty headlines, striking photo…
Peter Gumbel
September 11, 2014
From the Curator

Ensuring Women Have A Seat at the Leadership Table

The lunch for the summer interns was held at the editor’s swanky men’s club. The other interns and I had arrived ahead of the brass and I took my seat…
Ann Marie Lipinski
September 11, 2014
Crusader and Mentor
Nieman Notes

Crusader and Mentor

John Seigenthaler, NF ’59, who died July 11 at age 86, was a throwback to the crusading newspaper editor of legend. During his 39 years at The (Nashville) Tennessean—as reporter,…
James D. Squires
September 11, 2014
Making Us Believers
Nieman Notes

Making Us Believers

Margot Adler, NF ’82, a longtime correspondent for NPR, died of cancer at her home in New York on July 28. She was 68. Adler joined NPR in 1979 as…
Alex S. Jones
September 11, 2014
“The Sense of Being Somewhere Else”
Nieman Notes

“The Sense of Being Somewhere Else”

Robert Drew, NF ’55, whose 1960 documentary about John F. Kennedy, “Primary,” is regarded as the start of American cinéma vérité, died July 30 at his home in Sharon, Connecticut.…
Robert Drew
September 11, 2014
It’s Good to Talk
Features

It’s Good to Talk

Members of Cuba’s mass media, which is completely in the hands of the state, cover only what’s convenient for the government. Because of that, in February of 2009, a group…
Roberto de Jesús Guerra Pérez
September 11, 2014
Ready for the Big One: Making the Case for Disaster Preparedness Reporting
Watchdog

Ready for the Big One: Making the Case for Disaster Preparedness Reporting

In 2002, Mark Schleifstein and a team of reporters in New Orleans wrote “Washing Away,” a five-part series in The Times-Picayune that predicted the devastation of Hurricane Katrina three years…
John Dyer
September 11, 2014
Sounding

Doing My Own Thing

Iwas 5 or 6 years old when my mother, a great lover of Nigerian folklore, told me a story from one of the oldest tribes in my country. In my…
Ameto Akpe
September 11, 2014
Behind the Data Curtain
Niemans @ Work

Behind the Data Curtain

In my first reporting job out of college, I traveled across Communist Eastern Europe and wrote travel guidebooks. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, I obtained my secret police…
Adam Tanner
September 11, 2014
Caught in the Crossfire
Niemans @ Work

Caught in the Crossfire

Over the past year, Holly Williams, NF ’08, a correspondent for CBS News, has covered conflicts in Iraq and Ukraine. Earlier this summer she made her first trip to Gaza:On…
Holly Williams
September 11, 2014
"Thick Files and a Long Memory"
Features

“Thick Files and a Long Memory”

Henry Constantin was a 22-year-old journalism student at a Cuban university in 2006 when he proposed a thesis critical of the country’s brand of reporting. He was promptly kicked out…
Juan O. Tamayo
September 11, 2014
Like Father, Like Daughter
Books

Like Father, Like Daughter

The following is an excerpt from Will Steacy’s “Deadline.”Perhaps like many children of newspaper reporters, I came to understand small pieces of my father’s job before the full picture of…
Allison Steele
September 11, 2014
Scott Stossel on Taking Ideas Journalism Online at The Atlantic
Live @ Lippmann

Scott Stossel on Taking Ideas Journalism Online at The Atlantic

Scott Stossel, editor of The Atlantic, has reason to be nervous. That’s partly because of his personality—detailed in “My Age of Anxiety: Fear, Hope, Dread, and the Search for Peace…
Scott Stossel
September 11, 2014
Niemans @ Work

Film as Long-form

There should be a recovery group for what I am: an author of nonfiction books, born in the 1970s. Yet I received shared Emmy and National Magazine Award nominations in…
Alissa Quart
September 11, 2014
Facts, Not Opinions
Features

Facts, Not Opinions

As recently as 2008, it was illegal for Cubans to own a cell phone and impossible for them to buy a computer. No independent journalist had a mobile device, and…
Hugo A. Landa
September 11, 2014
Island in the Storm
Features

Island in the Storm

In Cuba, it’s called “D-Day”—that hypothetical future date on which the Castro regime falls. D-Day is a date long-awaited by broad sectors of the population, the Cuban diaspora, media outlets…
Yoani Sánchez
September 11, 2014
Sharing Their Stories
Diversity

Sharing Their Stories

CNNMeredith ArtleyVice president and managing editor, CNN DigitalThere’s been a longstanding issue of not having enough women’s voices among the big names in journalismThere’s been a longstanding issue of not…
September 11, 2014
Looking Up
Books

Looking Up

To accompany an excerpt from Will Steacy’s “Deadline,” Nieman Reports asked longtime Philadelphia Inquirer staffer Dan Biddle, a 1990 Nieman Fellow, to summarize the paper’s recent history and its current…
Dan Biddle
September 11, 2014
Coming Home
Nieman Notes

Coming Home

Almost 50 years after Nat Nakasa, NF ’65, died and was buried 
in a New York cemetery, 
his remains have been brought back to South Africa. The repatriation fulfills not…
Mathatha Tsedu
September 9, 2014