Iason Athanasiadis, the journalist and photographer arrested in Tehran June 17, was released Sunday, July 5. He was said to have been the only non-Iranian among more than 40 journalists detained in the days of protest following the June 12 Iranian elections. Read more
Sandy Tolan, a 1993 Nieman Fellow, writes why the detention of friend and colleague Iason Athanasiadis by Iranian authorities is so troubling. Read more
Iason Athanasiadis, our friend and colleague from the Nieman Class of 2008, is being detained by the Iranian government. “The Nieman Foundation and members of the Nieman community around the world are supportive of the Greek diplomatic initiatives to secure Iason’s safe and immediate release,” said Nieman Curator Bob Giles. Read more
Paul Solman, NewsHours' Business & Economics correspondent and 1977 Nieman Fellow, has been featured as part of the ongoing PBS Engage series called “Five Good Questions.” The series features a PBS celebrity or insider and asks visitors to send in questions to be answered the following week. Read more
Iason Athanasiadis, a 2008 Nieman Fellow and freelance journalist, wrote Nieman Reports' lead story about journalists in Iran in the Summer 2009 issue. He also contributed a photo essay about contemporary Iran, and now he is reporting from Iran in the chaotic aftermath of the disputed Iranian election for the Washington Times, Global Post, and the Untold Stories blog on the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting's Web site, which is supporting his reporting in Iran. Read more
In "Hope and Despair in the American City: Why There Are No Bad Schools in Raleigh," Gerald Grant, a 1968 Nieman Fellow, compares two cities—his hometown of Syracuse, New York, and Raleigh, North Carolina—in order to examine the consequences of the nation’s ongoing educational inequities. Read more
James Scott, a 2007 Nieman Fellow, has authored "The Attack on the Liberty: The Untold Story of Israel's Deadly 1967 Assault on a U.S. Spy Ship," available in bookstores this week. In this book, Scott recounts the story of the horrifying attack on the U.S.S. Liberty by Israeli fighter jets and torpedo boats, and the tremendous impact it had on the lives of the crew. Read more
Hugh Morris, a 1951 Nieman Fellow, died June 2, 2009, in Frankfort, Ky. A longtime bureau chief for The (Louisville, Ky.) Courier-Journal, Morris was inducted into the Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame in 1997. He was 94. Read more
Bob Giles, Nieman Foundation Curator, announces to friends of the Nieman Narrative program the decision to suspend the Nieman Conference on Narrative Journalism and the Nieman Seminar for Narrative Editors during the 2009-2010 academic year. Read more
In this multimedia project produced for the Center of Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard, freelance photojournalist Kael Alford’s “unembedded” photography provides an example of “contextualized” reporting on a Muslim community in the global spotlight. Alford portrays Najaf, Iraq beyond the US cordon and Mahdi Army lines during the siege of August, 2004. Read more