Margaret Engel, a 1979 Nieman Fellow and director of the Alicia Patterson Foundation, has teamed up with her twin sister Allison to write a screenplay on the life of the late columnist and humorist Molly Ivins. “Red Hot Patriot: The Kick-Ass Wit of Molly Ivins” is a one-woman show starring Kathleen Turner that has just opened at the Philadelphia Theatre Company. Read more
The recipients of the 2010 J. Anthony Lukas Prize Project Awards for exceptional nonfiction include David Finkel’s up-close examination of the human costs of making war; James Davidson’s study of the homoerotic culture of ancient Greece; and an account of life in inner city Newark, N.J., focusing on the efforts of an ex-con and former drug dealer to help impoverished children in the city’s most depressed neighborhood, by Jonathan Schuppe. Read more
Phil Johnson, the New Orleans television icon who helped build WWL-TV’s newsroom into a local and national powerhouse, giving the station a distinctive and distinguished on-air editorial voice while also winning three Peabody awards for his documentaries, died late March 22 after a lengthy illness. He was a 1959 Nieman Fellow. Read more
Margie Mason, a 2009 Global Health Fellow, was part of the Associated Press Team honored with a National Headliners Award for "When Drugs Stop Working." The five-part series received a third place nod in the Health/Medical Science Writing category. Read more
The Chicago Tribune has won the Taylor Family Award for Fairness in Newspapers for “Clout Goes to College,” its evenhanded and thorough investigation of improper influence peddling in the admissions process at the University of Illinois. Read more
John Strohmeyer, who chronicled the demise of Bethlehem, Pa. turbulent steel industry and won a Pulitzer Prize for editorials dissipating racial tensions in that city, died at 85 on March 3. He was a 1953 Nieman Fellow. Read more
Former Nieman Curator and 1989 Nieman Fellow Bill Kovach received the 2010 W.M. Kiplinger Award for Distinguished Contributions to Journalism from the National Press Foundation on February 16. Read more
