Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Robert Caro, NF ’66, reporter Beth Macy, NF’10, and author Andrew Solomon are winners of the 2013 Lukas Prize Project Awards, honoring the best in American nonfiction writing. Read more
In a breaking news situation, journalists get an adrenaline rush. There is a palpable eagerness to get the scoop, to be the first to bring the story to the public. In today's world of social media, mobile phones, and real-time 24/7 news cycle, though, journalists face competition from all sides: eyewitness accounts, official sources, and even friends and family are sharing news before mainstream news institutions have "published" the official news story. Read more
As part of his Nieman Fellowship, Boston Globe reporter David Abel is taking a class on how to make documentary films. Yesterday he was working on his final project, about Juli Windsor, the first dwarf to run the Boston Marathon. He woke up at 5 o'clock in the morning and went to film Windsor getting ready, then took the bus with her to Hopkinton, where the race starts. He was standing on the finish line, shooting footage of all the runners coming across and waiting for Windsor to come in when the bombs went off. Read more
The explosions at the Boston Marathon made front-page news around the world, with Líberation in Paris, El País in Madrid, and The Jerusalem Post in Israel carrying coverage from 2013 Nieman Fellows Ludovic Blecher, Borja Echevarria, and Yaakov Katz, respectively. Read more
Investigative reporter David Jackson, NF ’11, is part of the Chicago Tribune team that that has won the 2012 Investigative Reporters & Editors’ FOI Award for “Empty-Desk Epidemic.” The series exposed a devastating pattern of student absenteeism in the Chicago school system and the indifference of city officials who ignored the problem.
NPR’s Howard Berkes, a 1998 Nieman Fellow, was among the finalists for the in multiplatform /large category for “As Mine Protections Fail, Black Lung Cases Surge,” co-produced by NPR, the Center for Public Integrity and The Charleston Gazette. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's John Diedrich, an affiliate from the Class of 2012, was a finalist with colleagues in two categories: the FOI Award for “Police Problems,” and the Investigations Triggered by Breaking News Award for “Spa Shooting.” Read more
Robert P. “Bob” Clark, a retired top editor of The Courier-Journal and The Louisville Times, died recently in Ohio. He was 91. Under his leadership, the newspapers won three Pulitzer Prizes. Clark also served as president of the Associated Press Managing Editors Association and of the American Society of Newspaper Editors. Read more
Anthony Lewis, a former New York Times reporter and columnist, author, and longtime advocate for free speech and justice, has died at the age of 85. A Nieman Fellow in the class of 1957, Lewis was a constitutional law expert whose groundbreaking coverage of the Supreme Court changed the way complex legal matters are reported in the United States. Read more
New York Times reporter Sam Dolnick has won the 2012 Worth Bingham Prize for Investigative Journalism for his three-part series Unlocked: Inside New Jersey’s Halfway Houses.
During an exhaustive 10-month investigation of New Jersey’s privately run halfway houses, Dolnick discovered a broken and horribly flawed correctional system in which gang activity, drug use, sexual assaults and other violent behavior were commonplace and where lax security led to hundreds of annual escapes. While at large, some fugitives committed violent crimes, including murder, yet the state failed to punish the halfway house operators responsible for the runaways. Read more
Grady Clay, NF ’49, a journalist and a leading national authority on urban design who wrote for The Courier-Journal and edited Landscape Architecture Quarterly, died Sunday, March 17, at 96. Architect and friend Steve Wiser called Clay “one of the nation’s leading urban design thinkers.” Read more
Boston Globe columnist Kevin Cullen, a 2003 Nieman Fellow, has won the Batten Medal for individual achievement in public-service journalism from the American Society of News Editors. Cullen, who also received the award in 2008, is the only journalist to have won the Batten twice. Read more
