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
A.C. Thompson received the 2011 I.F. Stone Medal for Journalistic Independence on Oct. 4 at Boston University. Thompson is a staff reporter for ProPublica whose work frequently exposes social injustice and the abuse of power. His reporting on events in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina was critical to the uncovering of a string of racially motivated killings of unarmed civilians by New Orleans police officers. He recently spoke with Nieman Watchdog about criminal justice reporting. Read more
Dan Froomkin, deputy editor of the Nieman Watchdog Project, has been named Washington bureau chief for The Huffington Post. He will oversee a staff of four reporters and an assistant editor and will contribute to Huffington’s home and political pages as a regular blogger. Read more
A panel of top journalists tries to derive some lessons from the elite media's failure to challenge what turned out to be a specious argument for war in Iraq. Read more
NiemanWatchdog.org is soliciting incisive, probing questions that President Bush and Senator Kerry should be asked at the upcoming presidential debates. Read more
The Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University launches a new Web site today to encourage watchdog reporting by drawing on authorities in various fields to suggest questions for the press to ask. Read more
Barry Sussman, who led The Washington Post's day-to-day coverage of the Watergate scandal, has been named editor of the Watchdog Project at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Read more
