With society potentially poised to turn the corner on mass incarceration, will news organizations rise to the challenge and increase their coverage? Or do limited resources and a lack of interest mean criminal justice issues—and the poignant underlying human-interest stories—continue to go largely unaddressed? Read more
Though The New York Times lacks a beat reporter and covers the issue of mass incarceration sporadically at best, those three pieces by Tierney in early 2013 addressed two key issues. RELATED ARTICLE … Read more
In an encrypted Q&A with The New York Times Magazine, National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden warned that journalists have been slow to properly respond to the threat of government surveillance. "I was surprised to realize that there were people in news organizations who didn’t recognize any unencrypted message sent over the Internet is being delivered to every intelligence service in the world," he wrote to Peter Maass about his initial attempts to communicate with Guardian reporter Glenn Greenwald. "In the wake of this year’s disclosures, it should be clear that unencrypted journalist-source communication is unforgivably reckless." Revelations over the last few months have made it clear that the U.S. government is willing and able to use telephone and Internet records to pursue sources who leak secrets to the media, and to do so by targeting reporters, if necessary. Read more
The way South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley tells it, what her state needs is more tax cuts and what it doesn’t need is the “public policy nightmare and fiscal disaster that is … Read more
Margaret Engel, a longtime champion of nonprofit journalism, hopes more foundations (including small, locally based ones) will start to recognize the essential public service work of news organizations—and will realize that their communities' needs are less likely to be met if reporters aren't out there exposing them. Read more
Photojournalist and filmmaker Molly Bingham writes that good journalism takes time—including time on the ground. And if we can't find some way to afford it, then our journalism will suffer. Third in a series of Q. and A.’s with former Nieman Fellows about the past, present and future of watchdog reporting. Read more
Job creation is a key topic in the presidential election but so far it's been all sound bites and no substance. Dan Froomkin, a new contributing editor to Nieman Reports and former deputy editor of the Nieman Watchdog Project, examines the jobs crisis and what's missing from Romney and Obama's statements on the issue. Neither seems ready to acknowledge that, in the words of Robert Pollin, author of “Back to Full Employment," creating decent jobs requires “substantial levels of government intervention.” Read more
Veteran investigative journalist Ken Armstrong, NF ’01, encourages his fellow reporters to look for patterns rather than isolated anecdotes, to focus on what others have to say rather than joust with sources, and not to be too humble. In a Q. and A. about watchdog reporting, he said stories too often are presented as black and white; what he’d like to see is “less villainizing, more humanizing.” And he singled out Steve Coll’s “Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power” as a well-researched book that doesn’t shy from nuance. Read more
