ISSUE

Winter 1997

Highways, Byways and Bylines

Roads as News Stories

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Articles

The Journalist's Trade

Too Many Degrees Of Separation: Strangers On Their Own News Beats

When Loren Ghiglione was rounding up comment recently regarding the minority hiring programs of the American Society of Newspaper Editors I automatically responded with a cheer. Who could argue with…
December 23, 1997
Highways

Beyond Road Maps

Only in the last 10 years has map production evolved from the esoteric territory of cartographers and geographers to desktop computers. Today, even someone with limited geographic literacy and computer…
Robert Dellaert
December 23, 1997
The Journalist's Trade

The Ken Galbraith (and Bill Buckley) Show

My interview with John Kenneth Galbraith began with his asking me a question. Peering down from his 6 feet 8 inches, the 88-year-old Galbraith inquired, “Just how many hours do…
Lorie Conway
December 23, 1997
Highways

The Case for Bus Rapid Transit

Much has been written about America’s love affair with the automobile. That’s why Nieman Reports is devoting the bulk of this edition to highways. What has been overlooked has been…
John E. Kain
December 23, 1997
The Journalist's Trade

Getting It Wrong on Whitewater

They’ve all said it so much that it is a given in the Whitewater coverage. It’s one of those “facts” you don’t even need to check out. The New York…
Gilbert Cranberg
December 23, 1997
Highways

Big Trucks and the Railroads

WASHINGTON—April 24, 1997. Steve Wellington of Mesa, Ariz., tells the Senate Commerce Committee how an 80,000-pound double trailer truck killed his eight-month pregnant wife, Cathy, and seriously injured four of…
David Barnes
December 23, 1997
Highways

Smart Roads, a Solution to Traffic Jams

0ne of the dominant trends in technological innovation has been engineers’ relentless success in stuffing ever more potatoes into the proverbial ten-pound sack. Bundles of copper cable the size of…
December 23, 1997
A Reader's View

Freelancing Abroad

So, you want to be a foreign correspondent. Fat chance. With publishers, editors and the big broadcasters refocusing on domestic news, the opportunities for getting a job as a real,…
Murray Seeger
December 23, 1997
Foreign Correspondence

Taking It to the Streets

I was mooing like a Holstein in the lobby of a Toronto hotel in 1984 when it struck me that there had to be a better way to cover a…
Jim Meek
December 23, 1997
Highways

$175 Billion Mystery

Why Do Newspapers Get So Close to Politicians On the Federal Transportation Bill?
John M. Biers
December 23, 1997
Highways

New Phoenician Roads

How a City Integrated Art Into Its Infrastructure
Barbara Goldstein
December 23, 1997
Highways

Private Toll Roads

Is the Glass One-Quarter Full or Three-Quarters Empty?
Joseph M. Giglio
December 23, 1997
Foreign Correspondence

One David, Two Goliaths

The Struggle for Independent Media in Burundi
Bryan Rich
December 23, 1997
Technology

Back From the Future

Spending an hour talking to Jon Katz, who writes “Media Rant” for HotWired, the Web site run by Wired Magazine, is like spending an hour with someone who has been…
Tom Regan
December 23, 1997
Highways

Let the Construction Begin

In the months before Utah began rebuilding its major north-south interstate, a public relations firm chose “’Satch” to guide motorists through the coming years of highway turmoil. Named after the…
Judy Fahys
December 23, 1997
The Journalist's Trade

Bashing American Schools

How the Print and Visual Media All Too Often Misunderstand, Misrepresent and Thereby Misreport and Severely Damage Our American System of Public Education
Evans Clinchy
December 23, 1997
Highways

Paved with Gold

The Unappreciated World of Highway Finance
David Luberoff
December 22, 1997
Highways

Road Rage in the West

Roads triggered rage long before obscenities and gunfire encroached on the daily urban commute, especially in the vast and empty landscapes of the American West. Good roads are still rare…
Howard Berkes
December 22, 1997
Highways

Perpetual Paving = More Congestion

In all the years that Al Foster has lived in northern Michigan, every one who knows the 69-year-old dairy farmer describes him as tough, respected and rational. Foster, the supervisor…
Keith Schneider
December 22, 1997
Highways

What Readers Like and Respond To

It was a tired old column that Boston Globe editors killed in 1991. “Starts & Stops” had run for a couple of years weekly in the Metro/Region section, starting out…
Thomas C. Palmer Jr.
December 22, 1997
Highways

Digging Out News at Boston’s Big Dig

Peter M. Zuk is the Project Director for what we refer to as the largest public works project under way in the United States, the Big Dig. Except for the…
Thomas C. Palmer Jr.
December 22, 1997

Masthead

Publisher
Bill Kovach
Editor
Robert Phelps
Business Manager
Susan Goldstein
Assistant Editor
Lois Fiore
Editorial Assistant
Molly Marsh
Technology Editor
Lewis Clapp
Design Editor
Deborah Smiley
Cover Image
Courtesy of Central Artery/Tunnel Project