Athens, Georgia To the Editor: Undoubtedly under severe space constraints, my good friend Phil Meyer and his co-author, M. David Arant, plucked a six-word quote from my book to lead their fine article on newsroom ethics (“Changing Values in the … Read more
Angola, Indiana To the Editor: It was refreshing to read Morton Mintz’s article, “The ACLU and the Tobacco Companies” [Nieman Reports Spring 1998]. Such an exposé is long overdue, and I applaud you for printing it, especially since it is … Read more
As this issue of Nieman Reports goes to press, Sirius, the Dog Star, rises with the sun. We are in the midst of dog days, and the suspicions of the ancients that it is a time liable to madness are … Read more
Carole Kneeland was a seasoned reporter when she arrived as news director at KVUE-TV in Austin nine years ago. But she didn’t have a day’s worth of newsroom management experience. Still, within months, Carole had a … Read more
One of the things I wondered about when I returned to Boston after 12 years abroad was how I could possibly keep up with the ever-evolving story of China’s emergence as a world power, which I had covered as a … Read more
America’s Most Wanted, 1994. Oil and acrylic on canvas. 24 x 32. By permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux. “Painting By Numbers” is a book about art and freedom, authority and control. Read more
When one thinks of how an ambassador’s career gets started, a rocky beach and seagulls don’t likely come to mind. But this is how Smith Hempstone, a former Editor-in-Chief of The Washington Times and 1965 Nieman Fellow, says he first … Read more
Alabanians show reports of beatings by Serbs in Kosovo. These photos were taken in August, 1993 in Serbia, Bosnia and Kosovo for The Boston Globe. Reporter Sally Jacobs and I were sent from … Read more
A news organization that parrots somebody else’s reporting has to feel as badly, if not more badly, when the original report is wrong than the originating news organization. There are news organizations that say “well, gee, yeah, we did pick … Read more
“Born to see; meant to look.” That’s the personal motto taken from Goethe’s “Faust” that Peter Drucker, the legendary thinker and management expert, uses to describe his profession. An observer, not a participant. Almost like a … Read more
