Longtime Washington Post reporter and Nieman Watchdog Project founder Murrey Marder died on March 11, 2013, at the age of 93. A tireless crusader for watchdog and accountability journalism, he retired as a diplomatic correspondent for the Post in 1985 after reporting there for nearly four decades. During his long and storied career, he covered topics ranging from the Alger Hiss trial the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and was perhaps best known for challenging Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s anti-Communist investigations in the 1950’s. In 1957, Marder opened the Post’s London bureau, the first of the Washington Post Foreign Service. Marder was a Nieman Fellow in the class of 1950 and used his life savings to fund the Nieman Watchdog Project at Harvard. Read more
The Nieman Watchdog Project was launched in 1996, animated by a singular goal: to examine and invigorate journalism in its fundamental role of serving the public interest. The Watchdog Project—funded by 1950 Nieman Fellow Murrey Marder, a former diplomatic correspondent for The Washington Post—has been an important and enduring feature of Harvard’s Nieman Foundation for Journalism, and one that has evolved to address emerging issues in accountability journalism. Read more
Investigating Power, a new multimedia website that features the work of 26 leading journalists who have exposed abuses of power in contemporary U.S. history, profiles several Nieman Fellows. Those interviewed include John Carroll, NF ’72; former Nieman curator Bill Kovach, NF ’89; founder of the Nieman Watchdog Project Murrey Marder, NF ’50; Morton Mintz, NF ’64; Gene Roberts, NF ’62; and Nieman Watchdog editor Barry Sussman. Read more
