ISSUE

Winter 2014

The State of Journalism in China

The Communist Party has long striven to control freedom of speech in China. Websites from around the world are blocked. Major social media cannot be accessed, and advanced software is used to delete “sensitive” entries from the Internet. Domestic journalists who step over the invisible line of what’s permissible face being fired or even arrested, while foreign journalists face various forms of government intimidation. How reporters are trying to work around China's resurgent censorship, 25 years after Tiananmen.

Download PDF

Articles

Master of the Craft
Features

Master of the Craft

Through his scrupulously researched books chronicling the rise to power of President Lyndon Johnson and New York urban planner Robert Moses, Robert A. Caro, NF ’66, set a new standard…
Anne Hull
February 19, 2014
Command and Control
International Journalism

Command and Control

The Communist Party has long striven to control freedom of speech in China. Websites from around the world are blocked. Major social media cannot be accessed, and advanced software is…
Paul Mooney
February 18, 2014
Niemans @ Work

Keeping the Faith

The idea for New Canadian Media came to me at the 2009 Nieman Narrative Conference. During a workshop session I met an editor named Andrew Lam who, like me, is…
George Abraham
February 13, 2014
International Journalism

Evan Osnos: The Challenges of Covering China

Evan Osnos, who covered China for eight years with the Chicago Tribune and The New Yorker, spoke about the difficulty of covering modern China in the 2013 Joe Alex Morris…
Jonathan Seitz
February 12, 2014
Clear and Present Danger
Watchdog

Clear and Present Danger

In the fall of 2013, the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) quietly began booting up its Utah Data Center, a sprawling 1.5 million-square-foot facility designed to store and analyze the…
Geoffrey King
February 10, 2014
Technology, Transparency and Traditional Media
International Journalism

Technology, Transparency and Traditional Media

 As the profitability of traditional Chinese media plummets, journalists are increasingly beginning to transform themselves, with the acceptance of bribes for writing positive stories becoming more and more common among…
Luo Changping
February 10, 2014
About the Cover
Features

About the Cover

For the cover of the new issue of Nieman Reports, we wanted to say something intriguing about the state of journalism in China. Many of the stories in the cover…
Jan Gardner
February 6, 2014
Eluding the "Ministry of Truth"
International Journalism

Eluding the “Ministry of Truth”

RELATED ARTICLESCommand and ControlBy Paul MooneyMoral HazardBy Yang XiaoInternet censorship in China is not simply matter of blocking foreign websites and deleting anything deemed harmful, nor is the state the…
Anne Henochowicz
February 6, 2014
Stand and Deliver
Journalist’s Trade

Stand and Deliver

So, what’s your story?” asked Lea Thau, creator of “The Moth Radio Hour.” “I understand you came from Mexico as a young kid.” Thus began a series of questions to…
Alfredo Corchado
February 6, 2014
A Conversation and a Box of Kleenex
Journalist’s Trade

A Conversation and a Box of Kleenex

If a story echoes in the woods and no one hears it, is it still a story? Well, if it’s a written story, perhaps yes, but a spoken story needs…
Lea Thau
February 6, 2014
Features

Download “The State of Journalism in China”

“The State of Journalism in China” looks at how journalists in China work around the Communist Party’s efforts to rein in free speech. International reporters often face surveillance and harassment…
February 6, 2014
International Journalism

“Stigma Rent-seeking” on China’s Internet

In October 2013, journalist Chen Yongzhou of the New Express Daily was detained and arrested after he reported alleged corruption at Zoomlion, a state-owned company. His paper’s front-page pleas for…
Zhou Haiyan
February 5, 2014
“Access Is Overrated”: The Extended Transcript
Live @ Lippmann

“Access Is Overrated”: The Extended Transcript

Before joining The New Yorker in 1995, Jane Mayer spent 12 years as a reporter at The Wall Street Journal, where she was the paper’s first female White House correspondent.…
Jane Mayer
February 4, 2014
Nieman Notes

Winter 2014: Class Notes

Nieman Foundation curator Ann Marie Lipinski, NF ’90, welcomes attendees to the 75th anniversary dinner at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts. Photo by Lisa Abitbol Celebrating 75 yearsIn September, more…
January 31, 2014
The Future Is Ours
Features

The Future Is Ours

In 1808, as Napoleon’s forces marched across southern Spain, a group of Spanish exiles set up shop across the Atlantic in New Orleans. There, they capitalized on Louisiana’s newly acquired…
Laura Wides-Muñoz
January 31, 2014
Follow the Money
Journalist’s Trade

Follow the Money

In the fall of 2011, while researching a story on China’s business elites for The New York Times, I made a startling find: a set of corporate documents that linked…
David Barboza
January 31, 2014
The Secret Life of Keywords
International Journalism

The Secret Life of Keywords

I became a journalist in 1979. Back in those days, two basic skills were required of any journalist: reporting and writing. Three decades later, in an era of dramatic technological…
Qian Gang
January 31, 2014
Up Close and Personal
International Journalism

Up Close and Personal

Watch video of Osnos’s Morris Lecture, from which this essay was adapted In 1948, the Harvard Sinologist John King Fairbank wrote, “China is a journalist’s dream and a statistician’s nightmare.”…
Evan Osnos
January 31, 2014
Moral Hazard
International Journalism

Moral Hazard

In China, May has 35 days. All mention of June 4th, the day in 1989 on which the Tiananmen Square massacre took place, is forbidden. So Chinese journalists and bloggers…
Yang Xiao
January 31, 2014
Commerce & Corruption
International Journalism

Commerce & Corruption

Technology development has been reshaping the media industry worldwide. In developed countries like the United States, traditional media companies felt the shock brought on by new technology several years ago.…
Hu Shuli
January 30, 2014
Under Pressure
International Journalism

Under Pressure

Two-thousand-and-three was a milestone year for investigative journalism in China. Some media organizations had been transformed from Communist Party propaganda tools into market-oriented news outlets. The Party line had weakened…
Hu Yong
January 30, 2014
“Seven Days” That Shook Canada
Nieman Notes

“Seven Days” That Shook Canada

Read Leiterman’s obituary in The Globe and Mail Douglas Leiterman, NF ’54, an acclaimed journalist in Canada, died on December 13, 2012 at his winter home in Vero Beach, Florida.…
Tom Regan
January 29, 2014
Sounding

Stories To Live By

Soon after starting high school in Tg. Mures, the small city in Romania’s Transylvania region where I grew up, I began skipping classes.What we want is to give voice to…
Cristian Lupșa
January 29, 2014
A Native of Nowhere
Books

A Native of Nowhere

Nathaniel Nakasa left Harvard in the spring of 1965 ambivalent about his experience as a Nieman Fellow. According to his biographer Ryan Brown, he found studying race as an academic…
Ryan Brown
January 29, 2014
Make an Entrance
Niemans @ Work

Make an Entrance

I think I should just come right out and admit it: I’ve become obsessed with gates. I don’t dream of them, but I fixate on them. Even when the word…
Blair Kamin
January 29, 2014
Telling Malala's Story
Niemans @ Work

Telling Malala’s Story

Five years ago when I interviewed a schoolmaster campaigning against Taliban who had taken over his remote mountain valley of Swat in northern Pakistan, I couldn’t imagine how it would…
Christina Lamb
January 29, 2014
“Access Is Overrated”
Live @ Lippmann

“Access Is Overrated”

Watch video of Jane Mayer’s presentation at the Nieman Foundation’s 75th Anniversary celebration Before joining The New Yorker in 1995, Jane Mayer spent 12 years as a reporter at The…
Jane Mayer
January 29, 2014
Season of Dreams
From the Curator

Season of Dreams

Winter is Nieman’s season of dreams. The applications pour in from elite newsrooms and single-person startups, from G8 nations and nearly invisible economies. Most of the international files arrive electronically,…
Ann Marie Lipinski
January 29, 2014
Watchdog

Cold, Hard Facts to Cold, Hard Cash

inewsource grew out of the desperation that was sweeping newsrooms across the country in 2009. I was a senior editor for metro and investigations at The San Diego Union-Tribune, and…
Lorie Hearn
January 29, 2014
Nimble with Numbers
Watchdog

Nimble with Numbers

John A. McDermott founded The Chicago Reporter in 1972. Despite his best intentions, the Reporter is still around today.A civil rights activist who stood with the Rev. Martin Luther King…
Susan Smith Richardson
January 29, 2014