Jasmine Brown, a 2020 Nieman Fellow and a 2021 Nieman Visiting Fellow, on maintaining her faith in journalism through the struggles of the past year. One of my primary beliefs as a journalist is that I work to shed light … Read more
I asked a friend the other day if he was eager to get back to the newsroom we once shared. The publisher has indicated that the doors will reopen as soon as midsummer, with people returning for staggered shifts. My … Read more
Shaheen Pasha, a 2018 Knight Visiting Nieman Fellow, on starting the Prison Journalism Project and training incarcerated writers to tell stories about their prison community. The first thing I noticed was the dirty plexiglass as I entered the visiting room … Read more
George Floyd was alive the last time my newsroom was open. Think about that. So were a half million Americans and three-plus million citizens of the world, now lost to the plague of covid-19. Donald Trump was president, the news … Read more
On March 12, 2021, La Repubblica, Italy’s most widely circulated and trusted newspaper, placed a chilling headline on its front page: “AstraZeneca, Fear across Europe.” Some reports linked the vaccine developed by Oxford University to a few unusual cases of blood … Read more
Rania Abouzeid, a 2020 Nieman Fellow, on adapting her book on the Syrian Civil War for a young audience through “Sisters of the War: Two Remarkable True Stories of Survival and Hope in Syria.” I’d never thought about writing for … Read more
The first death reported from Covid-19 in the U.S. occurred about 30 miles from where I read about it, at the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, on the last day of February 2020. I was on my way home to New … Read more
Back in October of last year, seven months into the pandemic, life in Delaware, Ohio, a fast-growing exurb outside Columbus, wasn’t exactly normal, but it sure seemed close. A few weeks before the presidential election, maskless people strolled through the … Read more
Every Tuesday and Thursday, back around 2002, I would wrap my son in warm clothes and tuck him into a covered car seat. Only his little face would be showing as I’d snap the seat out of its base after … Read more