Nieman Foundation at Harvard
HOME
          
LATEST STORY
We reclaim a public good
ABOUT                    SUBSCRIBE
We reclaim a public good
“By changing news media’s core structures of ownership and control, we will finally let journalists be journalists.”
By Victor Pickard
Our ethics codes get an overhaul
“How candid should journalists be with the people we quote, photograph, and record, knowing that a single picture or paraphrase can, thanks to Google, irrevocably change their lives?”
By Bill Grueskin
In Brazil, collaboration in a time of state attacks
“Decentralizing major investigations not only makes stories more viable from an economic standpoint — it also extends their reach.”
By Moreno Cruz Osório
The value of push alerts goes beyond open rates
“In a news environment where the day’s fifth-most-important story would have been an all-hands-on-deck affair just a few years ago, news consumers have to choose what they’ll read deeply and what they’ll just be superficially aware of.”
By Rachel Schallom
Taking a cue from Indigenous journalists on climate change
“Indigenous journalists provide distinctive approaches for thinking differently about borders, ecological issues, and the deep relevance of histories of colonialism.”
By Candis Callison
A call for collaboration between storytelling and tech
“True partnerships require trust. Trust between the media company and its audience. Trust between advertising partners and media companies. And trust between different parts of our media companies.”
By Jeremy Gilbert and Jarrod Dicker
All that campaign cash will make the media’s problems worse
“This massive infusion of political cash into the media will benefit tech companies and cable news networks more than in previous cycles — reinforcing trends in the media industry that are hurting politics in America today and causing more damage than any negative ad.”
By Joshua Darr
Prepare media students for skills, not job titles
“Communication proficiency must be taught in a digital product context to prepare students with relevant and desirable skills, regardless of job title.”
By Cindy Royal
The race to 2021
“As we talk about converting users into subscribers, we need to embrace a similar (and possibly uncomfortable) conversion from news into information of value or need.”
By S. Mitra Kalita
Stronger solidarity among news organizations
“We’ll share more about the challenges we share — how to confront bad actors, how to bolster our businesses, and yes, how to fight and win battles on our own turf and our own terms.”
By Meredith Artley
Some kinds of journalism aren’t worth saving
“The question of how we save journalism (meaning newsrooms) will begin to shift to how do we save journalism (meaning the process).”
By Heather Bryant
Trade “politics” for “power”
“It’s not just a matter of semantics: The ways journalists decide what they cover — and how they think about the shape of that coverage — has an impact on the world.”
By Alice Antheaume
A changing industry amps up podcasters’ ambitions
“Listeners will not be content to be mere passengers on our creative trip. They want to drive sometimes.”
By Juleyka Lantigua-Williams
It’s the best time in a century to start a local news organization
“Most legacy executives have to embrace survival strategies — which leaves an opportunity of a lifetime for the risk-taker to take.”
By John Garrett
The death of the industry fad
“I’m afraid that as the people with the money keep scraping away at the edges, we’re going to see a lot less experimentation from mid-sized media outlets.”
By Ernie Smith
The big story of podcasting in 2019 was all about Spotify. Will 2020 be the year Apple strikes back?
Plus: A podcast network for tweens, NPR updates its fee model, Luminary’s collapse, and a few more thoughts on 2019.
By Nicholas Quah
Here’s what ProPublica learned about managing a collaboration across hundreds of news organizations
“Since the project began in 2017, we received more than 6,000 submissions, gathered hundreds of public records on hate crimes, and published more than 230 stories.”
People who are given correct information still misremember it to fit their own beliefs
Plus: “There is no bygone era of a well-informed, attentive public. What we have had in lieu of a well-informed citizenry is what might be termed a ‘load-bearing’ myth — the myth of the attentive public.”
What We’re Reading
Los Angeles Magazine / Brittany Martin
L.A.’s Asian-American activist newspaper from the ’70s is back in print

“We have eight decades of contributors and stories about growing up Asian American, even before the term was coined,” Park says. “We begin with Mo Nishida at Manzanar where he was interned with his baby sister and his mother. Mo was a very young child. An American soldier pointed a machine gun at him, his sister, and their mother, who had a nervous breakdown later that day. We go from there to 2019.”

The Atlantic / Adam Serwer
The fight over the 1619 Project is not about the facts

“Underlying each of the disagreements in the letter is not just a matter of historical fact but a conflict about whether Americans, from the Founders to the present day, are committed to the ideals they claim to revere. And while some of the critiques can be answered with historical fact, others are questions of interpretation grounded in perspective and experience.”

Washington Post
The cost of criticizing Trump: Journalist leaves Christian Post amid its plans to attack Christianity Today

“Journalist Napp Nazworth, who has worked for the Christian Post website since 2011, said he quit his job Monday because the website was planning to publish a pro-Trump editorial that would slam Christianity Today. Nazworth, who sits on the editorial board as politics editor, said the website has sought to represent both sides and published both pro- and anti-Trump stories.”

Journalism.co.uk / Marcela Kunova
The importance of teaching students about media literacy and misinformation

“Media studies, if adopted as a mandatory subject for all students in all schools, would better equip young citizens with resilience to misinformation than reactive resources (such as fact-checking and verification tools) and small-scale projects which focus primarily on skills and competencies rather than critical thinking.”

Elle / Madison Feller
Meet Rebecca Corbett: the NYT editor who guided some of the decade’s most seismic investigations
“She never seemed to stop working—because many of her projects were secret, and it was hard to gauge how much she was really fielding—and at times appeared to survive on black tea and dark-chocolate-covered almonds.”
Digiday / Tim Peterson
Advertisers pounce on TV’s discounted holiday rates

“The days between Christmas and New Year’s are typically considered a dead zone for TV advertising. People are more likely to be off skiing or returning presents or getting into politically charged arguments with their parents than tuning into TV. However, while viewership falls, so do ad rates.”

Columbia Journalism Review / Marc Herman
In Spain, an energy company bought the covers of newspapers ahead of the U.N. climate conference
“Politicians and members of local media worry that the gas company’s ad buy means editors are so financially strapped, they can no longer refuse advertisers, even ones that may present a conflict of interest: how do you sell the front page on Monday morning, to a company you have to cover for Monday night?”
The New York Times / Lara Takenaga
Axios / Sara Fischer
NBC News forms new election security team

“The new team is comprised of senior-level journalists across NBC News and MSNBC who cover topics ranging from social media and the dark web, to national security, technology and the law.”

The Atlantic / Lenika Cruz
How one Atlantic editor is spending her holidays this year

“Last week, Vogue published an article detailing how some of its editors are spending Christmas this year. It was a wonderful opportunity for the denizens of the internet to gawk at unselfconscious proclamations of wealth and access and taste. Just another example of how ‘rich people are the worst.'”

Nieman Lab is a project to try to help figure out where the news is headed in the Internet age. Sign up for The Digest, our daily email with all the freshest future-of-journalism news.