NPR reporter Margot Adler has died in New York following a long battle with cancer. A member of the Nieman Class of 1982, she was a recognizable voice on NPR’s airwaves for more than three decades, covering stories as wide ranging as the AIDS epidemic, confrontations involving the Ku Klux Klan and the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Read more
On May 13, the J. Anthony Lukas Prize Project awards were presented to Pulitzer Prize-winning author Sheri Fink, Harvard history professor Jill Lepore, and Adrienne Berard, a 2013 graduate of the Columbia Journalism School. The three women’s works were selected as exemplary nonfiction, noted for their literary artfulness and social relevance. Read more
The series that won the 2013 Worth Bingham Prize for Investigative Journalism began with a call from a source. A social worker told Sacramento Bee reporter Cynthia Hubert about a man the police had brought in named James Flavy Coy Brown. Read more
Columbia Journalism School and the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University today announced the three winners of the Lukas Prize Project Awards.
Sheri Fink, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, has won the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize for her investigation of patient deaths at a New Orleans hospital in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Jill Lepore, a prolific author and Harvard University professor who combines her interests in historical research, language and literature, will receive the Mark Lynton History Prize for her biography of Jane Franklin Mecom. Reporter and writer Adrienne Berard has won the J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award for her book about the untold story of the first fight for desegregation in Southern schools. Read more
Susan Crawford, author of “Captive Audience: The Telecom Industry and Monopoly Power in the New Gilded Age,” came to the Nieman Foundation to talk about net neutrality, the proposed Comcast-Time Warner Cable merger, and why regulation is vital to ensuring faster and more equitable Internet access. Read more
Ben Smith became editor in chief of BuzzFeed in 2011 when the website known for its listicles and cat photos got into the business of breaking news. Smith, an early hire at Politico, immediately built a reporting staff. Read more
Cameroonian-born philosopher and political scientist Achille Mbembe is a professor at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa who specializes in issues of urbanization and modern society. He spent the fall of 2013 teaching a course on African cities at Harvard, and in December he stopped by the Nieman Foundation. Read more
Twitter coverage of the manhunt in Watertown marks a wake-up call to journalists everywhere. Even more remarkable are the implications for ordinary citizens who, without a press pass, intentionally plant themselves on the scene to witness and tweet what they see in real time. For the latter group of news gatherers, this event instills a newfound sense of power and responsibility in how they verify and disseminate news; i.e., gain credibility and authority as a news source. 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
The Chicago Tribune has won the Nieman Foundation’s 2012 Taylor Family Award for Fairness in Newspapers for “Playing with Fire.” The six-part series revealed how the chemical and tobacco industries for years misled the public with deceptive campaigns that promoted the use of toxic flame-retardant chemicals that don’t work and pose serious health risks to consumers. Read more
