Nieman Reports

Winter 1999 - Spring 2000

Commemorative Double Issue

Cover for Winter 1999 - Spring 2000

What you [see] here is a collection which reflects the substance of the first 53 years of the conversation journalists have engaged in about their rights and responsibilities in the pages of Nieman Reports. At times you will find an article that opened a new argument or ended an old one. Throughout you will hear the voices of journalists committed to their work challenging colleagues to raise the standards of discovering, reporting, writing and editing the news in a context meaningful for navigation within a free society. – Bill Kovach

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Journalism

Winter 1999 – Spring 2000: Journalism Introduction

By Melissa Ludtke• Features• December 15, 1999

What you [see] here is a collection which reflects the substance of the first 53 years of the conversation journalists have engaged in about their rights and responsibilities in the pages of Nieman Reports. At times you will find an article that opened a new argument or ended an old one. Throughout you will hear the voices of journalists committed to their work challenging colleagues to raise the standards of discovering, reporting, writing and editing the news in a context meaningful for navigation within a free society. – Bill Kovach Read more

1954: Handouts to the Country Editor

By Evan Hill• Features• December 15, 1999

[This article originally appeared in the July 1954 issue of Nieman Reports.] Fiction writers have used a broad and inaccurate pen in painting the modern country editor as a grey-haired, old man wearing a green eyeshade, black muslin elastic-banded arm … Read more

1959: The Pursuit of Journalism

By Thomas Griffith• Features• December 15, 1999

President Truman holding a press conference on the lawn of the “Little White House,” his vacation residence at Key West, Florida, surrounded by reporters, photographers and staff members, 1950. Photo courtesy of the … Read more

1960: Newspapermen and Lawyers

By Anthony Lewis• Features• December 15, 1999

[This article originally appeared in the July 1960 issue of Nieman Reports.] I propose to speak tonight on a moderately pretentious topic, the public responsibilities of newspapermen and lawyers.… As my concern is public responsibility in our professions, I want … Read more

1960: The Catholic Issue

By Archibald MacLeish• Features• December 15, 1999

[This article originally appeared in the September 1960 issue of Nieman Reports.] Cartoon courtesy of the John F. Kennedy Library.…only the man who has learned historical depth can give what we call the … Read more

1961: Are We the Best Informed Nation?

By James W. Markham• Features• December 15, 1999

[This article originally appeared in the July 1961 issue of Nieman Reports.] “Communications specialists” and working newspapermen sometimes glibly assert without a shred of proof that the American people are the best informed people in the world. This is a … Read more

1960: Asking Rude Questions

By Harry S. Ashmore• Features• December 15, 1999

[This article originally appeared in the September 1960 issue of Nieman Reports.] …I remember going over to the President’s house.… And he said, “You know it’s only three years—you’re the third class [of Niemans]. But I think maybe you people … Read more

1966: Custodians of the City

By Harry S. Ashmore• Features• December 15, 1999

[This article originally appeared in the March 1966 issue of Nieman Reports.] I was in Greenville when the age of electronic journalism first came creeping in, and I have always thought that a kind of monument was erected there on … Read more

1978: Uphill All the Way

By Alden Whitman• Features• December 15, 1999

[This article originally appeared in the Winter 1978 issue of Nieman Reports.] …Having been introduced to newspaper work on a thriving paper that received its United States and world reports by Morse code—when the telegraphers actually used a Prince Albert … Read more

1971: The Xerox and the Pentagon

By Herbert Kupferberg• Features• December 15, 1999

[This article originally appeared in the September 1971 issue of Nieman Reports.] …To the office secretary, the Xerox machine is the greatest invention since the coffee break. In an instant, carbon paper has been made obsolete. True, many offices, including … Read more

1979: Yes Virginia, There Is an Agnes

By Jerome Aumente• Features• December 15, 1999

[This article originally appeared in the Summer 1979 issue of Nieman Reports.] …Louis M. Lyons, as Nieman Curator, continually struggled against the ban on women from the program. His correspondence with the University administration in the early 1940’s shows that … Read more

1986: The Us-First Syndrome

By Sam Zagoria• Features• December 15, 1999

[This article originally appeared in the Summer 1986 issue of Nieman Reports.] For whom do reporters write? For the readers? Well, yes and no. After two years inside a daily newspaper, I have concluded that among the hundreds of stories … Read more

1996: A Grueling Standard to Live By

By Carole Kneeland• Features• December 15, 1999

[This article originally appeared in the Fall 1996 issue of Nieman Reports.] Violent crime rates have been falling, yet sensational crime coverage on television news has been rising. So have the fears of viewers who have an exaggerated sense they … Read more

1998: This Is Watchdog Journalism

By Murrey Marder• Features• December 15, 1999

[This article originally appeared in the Summer 1998 issue of Nieman Reports.] [T]here is far too little public understanding in the United States about the role of the press in the American system. And one good reason for that is … Read more

First Amendment

The Bill of Rights

Journalist’s Trade• December 15, 1999

The Bill of Rights, as this parchment copy is now known, is on permanent display in the Rotunda of the National Archives. Courtesy National Archives and Records Administration. Read more

1980: The New Reality

By Anthony Lewis• Journalist’s Trade• December 15, 1999

[This article originally appeared in the Spring 1980 issue of Nieman Reports.] Martin Chuzzlewit, the hero of Dickens’s novel of that name, sails to the United States on a packet boat. As the boat reaches New York harbor, it is … Read more

Objectivity

Sources

Race

Winter 1999 – Spring 2000: Race Introduction

By Melissa Ludtke• Features• December 15, 1999

From early in the magazine’s history, America’s dilemma—race relations and, in this case, how journalists report stories involving race—has been dissected and debated. Regarded initially in Nieman Reports from the perspective of two Southern newspaper editors, Hodding Carter (NF’40) and … Read more

1948: The Southern Revolt

By Hodding Carter• Opinion• December 15, 1999

[This article originally appeared in the April 1948 issue of Nieman Reports.] As a personal preface to these comments, I would like to point out that they have been delayed because of my absence from Greenville on a speaking trip … Read more

1956: A Negro Reporter at the Till Trial

By Simeon Booker• Opinion• December 15, 1999

[This article originally appeared in the January 1956 issue of Nieman Reports.] Millions of words were written about the recent Till murder trial, but the most dramatic and, by far, the most significant development during the hectic week in the … Read more

1962: The Reporter in the Deep South

By John Herbers• Opinion• December 15, 1999

[This article originally appeared in the April 1962 issue of Nieman Reports.] In “Absolom, Absolom!,” one of William Faulkner’s great Gothic novels of Yoknapatawpha county, Quinten Compson goes to Harvard and is questioned endlessly by his Canadian roommate and others: … Read more

1968: A Newspaper’s Role Between the Riots

By Philip Meyer• Opinion• December 15, 1999

[This article originally appeared in the June 1968 issue of Nieman Reports.] When the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders blamed white racism for the destructive environment of the ghettos, most of the immediate reaction was unfavorable. The charge evoked … Read more

Electronic Media

1952: Al Capp Views the Networks

By Al Capp• Technology• December 15, 1999

[This article originally appeared in the April 1952 issue of Nieman Reports.] The two main ways to communicate ideas in America are by press and radio. I’ve communicated with America both ways. I’ve found freedom of speech in the American … Read more

1981: A Conversation With Fred Friendly

Technology• December 15, 1999

“…Murrow had the sense of curiosity that all journalists have to have, a need to understand something before he talked about it, and a marvelous ear for copy.”—Friendly (left), with Edward R. Murrow. Read more

Photography

1974: Words on Pictures

By Steve Northup• Visual Journalism• December 15, 1999

[This article originally appeared in the Autumn 1974 issue of Nieman Reports.] The media—and in particular newspapers—are taken to task by Edwin Newman in the October [1974] issue of The Atlantic for appropriating words and phrases, overusing, abusing and, finally, … Read more

International News

1982: Endangered Species

By David Lamb• International Journalism• December 15, 1999

[This article originally appeared in the Autumn 1982 issue of Nieman Reports.] The independence era dawned over black Africa two decades ago, and in the flush of victory the new presidents promised their people many things: Constitutions, they said, would … Read more

Curator's Corner

Masthead

Publisher
Bill Kovach
Editor
Melissa Ludtke
Assistant Editor
Lois Fiore
Editorial Assistant
Adam Reilly
Design Editor
Deborah Smiley
Business Manager
Cheryl Scantlebury

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