Vol. 53 No. 1 Spring 1999 NIEMAN REPORTS THE NIEMAN FOUNDATION FOR JOURNALISM AT HARVARD UNIVERSITY

4 Voices and Experiences Of Young Journalists

5 Stitching a Community Together With a Newspaper Staffed by Young Journalists BY BRANDON TUBBS

8 Restoring a Sense of What It Means to Be a Journalist BY ROBIN JONES

10 When Mediocrity Beckons BY WILLIAM BRENT CUNNINGHAM

12 Falling in Love With Words and How Journalists Use Them BY KATHRYN S. WENNER

14 Teaching Journalism by Adhering to Unchanging Standards BY NANCY DAY

17 Using the Realities of the Newsroom to Train Journalists BY HELEN UBINAS

20 On-Line Journalism: Frustrations Along the Road to the Future BY STEPHEN BORELLI 23 Riding the Digital Wave Into Journalism: Is It the Best Wave for Students to Catch? BY STEPHEN D. ISAACS 25 Are Minorities Getting a Fair Shot At Journalism Jobs? The Answer is “No”: Now What Can be Done? BY CAROLYN TOLL OPPENHEIM

29 Journalist’s Trade

30 Using Education Data to Build a Story’s Foundation BY CAROL NAPOLITANO 33 A Newspaper’s Report Cards Offer Revealing Insights Into How Well Schools are Doing BY NEILL A. BOROWSKI AND CONNIE LANGLAND

35 Using Education Data Effectively BY SARAH COHEN 37 The Price of Hope: Investigating Disparities Among Rich and Poor Schools BY TED MELLNIK AND DEBBIE CENZIPER

40 The Learning Gap: Highlighting Teachers’ Competency BY LINDA J. JOHNSON 43 A Dual-Track Approach to Tackling the Topic of Reading: Reporting the Story and Pitching in to Fix the Problem BY DAVID LAUTER

46 By Being There, a Reporter Captures a Rare View of Middle School BY JOLAYNE HOUTZ 48 International Journalism

49 Hong Kong’s Press: While Debate Rages About Media Ethics, Self-Censorship Quietly Thrives BY PETER STEIN

51 When Numbers Talk, Journalists Help People Listen BY BRANT HOUSTON

52 International Journalists Use Internet Technology to Breach Borders BY MAUD S. BEELMAN

54 If Birds Were Reporters, What Would Their Eyes Reveal? BY CHRISTOPHER SIMPSON

59 Books

60 Unraveling the Mystery of Vanishing Foreign News BY DEBORAH AMOS

62 Foreign Correspondents Transform Their Coverage Into Books BY MURRAY SEEGER

65 What Difference Would It Make If Reporters Knew a War Crime When They Saw One? BY ROY GUTMAN

66 Can Business Reporting Become a Positive New Force in Foreign News Coverage? BY ORVILLE SCHELL

67 The Culture of Secrecy: Can It Be Cracked Open? BY ATHAN G. THEOHARIS

69 Race Intrudes on a Newspaperman’s Career BY JOSEPH WILLIAMS

70 A Desire to Tell People What They Ought to Know BY RAY SCHERER

72 Golf Offers a Window on Our Changing World BY TOM WITOSKY

3 Curator’s Corner

Nieman Notes

74 The Nieman Network Works in Wondrous Ways BY CHRIS BOWMAN 75 Class Notes

79 End Note: A Photographer Unites Generations With His Camera BY STEVEN RUBIN

The cover photograph is of a fourth-grade student from Lee County in South Carolina. Photo by Diedra Laird, The Charlotte Observer. Curator’s Corner Competing with Cyberspace: The Key is Reliability

By Bill Kovach

he Virginia Press Association invited me to their an- us. One way to do this is by letting readers know how they nual meeting to talk about the future. Specifically, are impacted by decisions made on agricultural crops in Tthey wanted to talk about how newspapers compete Mexico or bank loans in London or technological advances in the world of cyberspace. The weather canceled those in Japan or the number of African students at the local plans so I’d like to pass along the gist of what I’d intended college. to say. In the early days of radio, William Paley told skeptical The proliferation of voices created by the new technology subordinates who said there was no audience for classical combined with the 19th Century notion of what makes news music, “You give me the program and I’ll give you the has—in cases from O.J. Simpson’s trial to the impeachment audience.” They did, and the New York Philharmonic broad- story—created endless, overlapping reports of the same cast became one of radio’s longest-running programs. event rendered almost meaningless in the telling. There is reason to believe that, once the public’s taste is How does journalism regain its balance in this world? I cultivated in this regard, it will reap the harvest of an equally think, as they say in the movies, it’s back to the future. avid audience. No editor or publisher I know doubts newspapers will Finally, as the devolution of revenues and authority make survive in the future although the form of delivery will what is happening on the state, regional and local level more change. The future then places in the hands of journalists important to our readers, we must think of better ap- emerging tools to develop different ways to tell the impor- proaches to the way we monitor institutions close to home. tant stories that will assure an audience. The proliferating world of nonprofit organizations is Let me offer a few suggestions. exploding as the newly rich invest in private philanthropy. First, there needs to be a renewed understanding of This combined with the privatization of public functions is quality journalism. What will succeed in cyberspace is reli- reshaping public life in ways few of us fully comprehend. ability. As the world of information becomes one of limitless Because neither nonprofits nor privatized agencies are as voices marinated by advertising and entertainment to pro- transparent as public institutions, only an alert and curious duce what I call advertainment news, the simple virtue of press can make understandable these relationships that reliable information will become more distinctive. This directly impact on the health and welfare of communities. simple virtue has equally simple requirements for its realiza- What does it mean, for example, that by privatizing prisons tion: boundless curiosity, the indispensable attribute for we create a for-profit institution that has a vested interest in deep and textured detail that results from tenacious re- incarceration? What is the impact on a community when search and reporting. Curiosity and the wide-ranging knowl- individuals withhold taxes from the support of broad public edge and expertise that provide broad context in the stories programs in order to support personal philanthropy? produced. There are limitless possibilities to redefine news in ways Some of these skills—knowledge and expertise—can be that will set the work of journalists apart from the babble of taught, which means journalism education must rise and self-interest and self-celebration and, in the process, make rise quickly to meet these new levels of challenge. the work of journalists more compelling, more connected But the basic skill—curiosity—is an innate skill. It must with, and more rewarding to the public. become a habit of the mind, nurtured in newsroom environ- A secure place for quality journalism in the mixed media ments open to fresh ideas, encouraging of creative ways of culture of today is assured if we produce reliable informa- looking at old subjects and resistant to the herd instinct. tion that results from a disciplined methodology and write The second area that needs to be examined is what we stories filled with depth, detail and context. cover and how we cover it. In doing this, we can reexamine the changing relation- International news is perhaps the most obvious example. ships between people and institutions in the world and in In a wired world in which anyone with a computer can read our society, exploring anew the currents, trends and events dozens of international newspapers at will we are inviting that are shaping their personal and professional lives. those who care to go elsewhere for their news. Curious reporters on the lookout for the human implica- For U.S. newspapers to all but ignore a world that has tions of these interrelated pressures are going to find new become more interdependent, one in which both the threat sources of news and bring to the pages of newspapers the and the promise of our future are tied directly to worldwide vigorous voices that your community is waiting to hear. ■ trends and distant events, is shortsighted and ultimately costly. We must find ways to develop a curiosity about how distant activities and events might affect the people around

Nieman Reports / Spring 1999 3 Voices and Experiences of Young Journalists

In this issue of Nieman Reports, we explore journalism from the perspective of those who are training to be journalists, those who are teaching the next generation, and those who recently entered this profession.

We open with an article written by our youngest journalist, a 19-year-old from a tiny town in rural Alabama who became a community reporter at the age of 13 for a newspaper that he and fellow students created.

Then we visit with several journalists-in-training and with a professor who reflects on what it was like to learn about journalism in the late 1960’s compared with what it is like to teach these skills today.

Later on, we hear from two reporters, one working in traditional media (a newspaper), the other in the frontier of on-line media.

Finally, two professors offer guidance about critical issues in journalism: the impact of “new media” on journalism and the training of new journalists, and the circumstances that confront minorities as they attempt to enter the journalism profession.

In asking young journalists to write about their experiences, what we wanted to provide was a forum in which they could express their views, concerns and ideas about the way in which journalism is practiced today.

What we found as their articles arrived is that these young journalists raise questions that are relevant for seasoned journalists to ponder. As one correspondent writes: “I know in the future…I’ll take opportunities to listen to interns and recent college graduates who other folks in the newsroom might dismiss as starry-eyed idealists. I hope that listening to their perspectives will help me remember why I chose to become a journalist in the first place.” ■

4 Nieman Reports / Spring 1999 Young Journalists Stitching a Community Together With A Newspaper Staffed by Young Journalists

By Brandon Tubbs

hawn “Sham” Franks, a sopho- more at Oakman (Alabama) High SSchool, once said: “You cannot have a democracy and you cannot have a community if you don’t have a way to share ideas.” His statement illustrated why it was essential for members of his community to have a shared public voice. Having lived in Oakman all of my 19 years, I knew exactly what Sham meant. People in my town (population 964) had no forum to call their own, no means of communication to strengthen the community. With the exception of covering the high school sporting events and announcing the times of the town council meetings, the county seat paper, The Daily Mountain Eagle in Jasper, Alabama, didn’t report on what was happening in Oakman. Gos- Brandon Tubbs working as a mentor to a student from the PACERS Cooperative. sip was the only predictable means of © Photo courtesy PACERS Photography, Program for Rural Services and Research. communication available to those of us who lived in this tiny coal mining town in the Appalachian foothills. who now had a newspaper to call their present time. It flew as a symbol for Sham’s observation arose out of a own. This experience transformed my The Oakman Times until October 1995 dialogue arranged among teachers, stu- life profoundly. when we decided to change it in order dents, community members and rural Today, I am a sophomore at the to provide a more professional look to educators by the PACERS Small Schools University of Alabama majoring in jour- the paper. Cooperative. Concerned about the fu- nalism. I know this is what I want to do I started out reporting whatever was ture viability of rural communities, in life because I’ve already been a jour- assigned to me by the editors and PACERS works in 29 small, rural public nalist in my hometown. I started being watched what I thought to be well- schools to cultivate dynamic ideas for one when I was a high school fresh- written pieces turned into blood with teaching and learning and community man, not just for my school and read by the red ink of fellow classmates and building. Because of Sham’s comment, my peers but for my community and teachers. I learned much of what I which turned out to be echoed by read by my elders. know now from making mistakes and other students and teachers in meet- At age 13, I became a community having mentors there to steer me in the ings that were held around the state, reporter, one of the original dozen right direction. By my sophomore year the idea of community newspapers staff members of The Oakman Times, I was the paper’s Editor. Our circula- reported, written and published by high the second newspaper in the town’s tion increased from 1,000 to 2,500 in school students was born. In my town, history. Business manager S.W. Vice one year, and the paper expanded to The Oakman Times went to press for published the town’s first paper, The 12 or 16 pages in a monthly tabloid the first time in December 1993. It was Oakman News, on April 12, 1894. format with a well-developed stylebook. a remarkable moment, for those of us Sidney Busby, a senior at Oakman High, Students like myself sold and de- who had the privilege of producing it designed our paper’s original banner signed ads, created the layout for the and for members of the community depicting Oakman’s heritage and stories, decided on and wrote editori-

Nieman Reports / Spring 1999 5 Young Journalists als, reported stories and attached head- minute span of time. The community such as Papa Chick, a man who has lines, and shot the photos. Our staff wanted to know where the paper was. witnessed a century of change in wasn’t structured like a totem pole. We were a few days late, and this made Oakman. People like him became our Meeting deadlines and teaching and us realize, for the first time, how im- primary sources for the paper because learning the necessary skills of our new portant we were becoming to the com- they knew more about Oakman than trade was everyone’s responsibility, and munity. It was a wake up call for us as anybody else did. Plus, they have unique so we incorporated a sense of team- we had just entered our second year of and valuable perspectives and opin- work into our routines. In working on publishing The Oakman Times. ions about the way people do things the newspaper, we were no longer As community members read the today. separated from our teachers by desks; paper, many of their skills improved as As journalists, we provided a forum we now learned together and from one well. Everyone bettered their lives by where voices within our community another. Teachers used this experience learning more about their community could come together. As a result, we and adapted it to their other class- and heritage. Our community newspa- were valued as much as the community rooms. per became a link between Oakman’s members working in the real world The public nature of our work de- past and its future. Young reporters and earning a paycheck. No longer manded that we improve in our use of talked with elders who could make viewed as insignificant young people the written word, in our business ne- history come alive in a way books can’t doing more damage than good, The gotiations, and in our interviewing because they had lived it. By under- Times staff became an essential infor- skills. The final product had to meet standing more about where we came mation resource for the community our standards as well as the standards from, we might have a better sense of and a respected advocate for civic well- of our community. And when we didn’t, where we were, wanted to go, and being. the community let us know. One Fri- ways to get there. For example, our paper served as day morning Mr. Woods, our principal, The Oakman Times preserved the the sole source of community informa- received nine phone calls within a 30- words, lessons and stories of people tion when SONAT, a Southeastern natu-

These newspapers were published by students in the PACERS cooperative. This effort to engage young people in journalism exists in 29 rural public schools.

6 Nieman Reports / Spring 1999 Young Journalists ral gas provider, planned to lay a pipe- issues relevant to the people who live understand the power of individual line within sight of the elementary in Oakman and discussed national is- voices, spoken by and for members of school. This plan was regarded as a sues only in the context of how they that community. threat to the lives of Oakman’s chil- affected us in our daily lives in our Perhaps it’s time for a “sandlot” re- dren and property by many in the com- community. newal of journalism, in which stories munity. The county seat paper reported Nor did the paper present the news are written out of love for the people that a pipeline was coming through in a dry manner. The Oakman Times they are about and respect for their Oakman and left it at that. Because of brings a certain flavor to its news cov- experiences and opinions. Journalism our coverage, people were informed erage. We sat and talked with folks. should be as conscious as Wendell of community meetings, and those Our reporters were more concerned Berry, yet as entertaining as Lewis unable to attend still had access to vital about talking with people and convey- Grizzard, as encompassing as the Bible, and accurate information. ing a clearer sense of meaning to our and as interesting and meaningful as Our publication continued to meet stories. We listened instead of just tak- Grandpa’s stories. Perhaps this is the the information need when reporting ing notes. We cared instead of just utopian standard, but even so, the goal on rural transportation issues. When reporting. We were vested in the com- of journalists should be to reach it. the state planned to remove and re- munity; we were concerned because it Today’s journalists should under- build Tubbs Bridge, which is the only affected our lives and the people we stand that they are part of the commu- safe means of getting to Oakman from cared about. nity (even if that community is our above Lost Creek, the county seat pa- The Oakman Times didn’t confuse nation or our planet), and should be per did not report on this decision. It reporting with analysis or agenda set- conscious of their role within this com- was The Oakman Times’s reporters ting. The paper didn’t use “experts” to munity. Their focus should move away who kept in contact with the state tell Oakman what a coal mine closing from being detached professionals to director of highway transportation and meant. Our coverage told how the min- being vested members of communities informed its readers about the pos- ers planned to feed their children and where they live and work. Students sible loss of access and kept them up- send them to school and asked them who now report for and publish The dated on any changes. And when build- what options were available to them. Oakman Times continue to uphold this ers of Corridor X, a new interstate We presented facts as we uncovered community approach and their work system connecting Memphis, Tennes- them and let the miners tell their sto- and the response it receives reinforce see and Birmingham, Alabama, con- ries and then let our readers decide for the necessary role newspapers play in demned land in the area, our reporters themselves how events affected the the life and preservation of communi- interviewed the people whose homes community. ties. Drawing from Oakman’s experi- were demolished to make way for the I once read where Jeannine ence, I urge journalists to stop talking road. The county seat paper simply Guttman, Executive Editor of The Port- about people through issues. Respon- reported that Corridor X was coming land (Maine) Press Herald, said in a sible journalism requires talking to and discussed its perceived economic national civic journalism workshop that people about issues. ■ benefits. “citizens were missing from our stories Through these experiences, I un- because we didn’t value their opin- Brandon Tubbs is from Oakman, derstand what journalists go through ions,” that “our own reporters didn’t Alabama. As a sophomore majoring on a daily basis. I gained a sense of want to talk to the public.” She ques- in journalism at the University of respect for other journalists, but I also tioned the relationship between giving Alabama, he writes for university cast a more informed and critical eye people ways to share ideas and the publications including The Commu- on their practice. Frankly, as a profes- well-being of our democracy just as nicator and The Crimson White. He sion, journalism could do better. Sham did. She wondered if her col- has interned at The Daily Mountain The Oakman Times didn’t latch on leagues were “hurting democracy by Eagle in Jasper, Alabama. He is now to a story like a tick to an old hound ignoring the public.” employed by the Program for Rural dog. There was no harassing people Unlike many newspapers, our pub- Services and Research working as a for an interview, but a way was always lication is not owned by some big out- mentor to other student-run commu- found to obtain necessary information. of-town corporation which shuffles nity newspapers within the PACERS No attention, except (save) editorials, editors in and out, not allowing them Cooperative. He plans to enter the was devoted to the Clinton scandal to learn about the community for which journalism profession with utopian because we decided not to dwell on they write. In an age of media consoli- standards. national stories full of sensationalism dation, only 125 papers publish in Ala- that have no direct and present link to bama today, compared with 1,000 at our community. This goes for stories the turn of this century. Competition like the murder of JonBenet Ramsey, and commercialism is not a priority for too. It’s not that controversy was The Times; community and the quality avoided. We reported aggressively on of our democratic and civic life is. We

Nieman Reports / Spring 1999 7 Young Journalists Restoring a Sense of What It Means To Be a Journalist

By Robin Jones

ost people instinctively want lecturer, a professor in the “I started to wonder: At what to teach others what they school’s television depart- point in my career did I decide I Mknow. And journalists are no ment, did exactly what I exception. It is our job, after all, to vowed I wouldn’t do. He couldn’t do anything to make share with our readers, viewers and tried to encourage the stu- journalism better?” listeners what we discover in the course dents to challenge some of our reporting. But many of us also of what could be called have an impulse to try to convince the “norms” of journalism. my awakening that semester. Through- others to agree with our opinions about Specifically, he argued that the mem- out the term, I found myself increas- what we know, and this is the point at bers of the media ought to be much ingly enchanted with my students’ in- which journalists are taught to sup- more careful when they creates he- sights on the state of journalism. Often press this desire. Just as it is our job to roes. He gave examples of how some in their remarks contained a certain share our findings, it is also our job to the media transformed celebrities into naiveté and a heartbreakingly sweet remain neutral in our telling. heroes even when they’d done noth- idealism that I realized had become It was this cluster of ideas that I ing heroic. Then he described how almost alien to me even in the short brought with me into the classroom those same reporters were quick to time I’d worked in the business. I started last spring when I began working as a knock those “heros” off their pedestals to hear these sentiments expressed teaching assistant for an entry-level jour- when public sentiment turned sour. more and more often in the comments nalism class at the University of Mis- He challenged the students to look for they made in class, and I began to see souri. After college I had worked as a the real heroes and to find ways to hold it in the essays they turned in: These reporter at a small newspaper, but af- their actions and beliefs up as examples aspiring journalists had a burgeoning ter two years I felt I needed to return to for everyone to emulate. desire to do good, to make the world a journalism school to learn more about His lecture inspired Karyn; she told better place. the profession before continuing in it. me she left that class with a renewed These students clearly wanted to As a teaching assistant, I felt one of sense of purpose about the profession change things; they hoped to make my primary roles was to explain the she had chosen. She told me she agreed journalism more credible by doing need for journalism’s “norms” (such as wholeheartedly with his message and things differently. Unlike some of us passing along the admonition about intended to challenge the hero-mak- who have worked as reporters, they impartiality) to help 19 young journal- ing-and-breaking cycle of news report- didn’t shrug and cast the blame else- ists understand and put into practice ing when she started working. where. They never accepted the ratio- the profession’s “rules.” It was not my While I’d agreed with the lecturer’s nale that the viewers want to see Den- place, I thought, to question the status views about the recklessness of some nis Rodman’s exploits, so we should quo of the profession or even encour- media coverage, I hadn’t been as in- feature them. They never used the ex- age my students to challenge the way spired as Karyn was. Rather, I remem- cuse that news reporting is nothing journalism is practiced today. ber thinking that even though I didn’t more than a business. Then, late one afternoon in the early like the celebrity worship I was seeing My students believed they could part of the semester, I had a revealing practiced by some in the media, I felt maintain the integrity of their chosen conversation with Karyn, a doe-eyed powerless to change it, so why try? But profession and still satisfy its business and sweet-voiced freshman. Prior to I didn’t tell Karyn that because by the side. They believed they could live by this, she had talked candidly about her time she finished talking I was feeling the Society of Professional Journalists’ dreams of becoming a political corre- ashamed of my defeatist attitude. And code of ethics, the edict that instructs spondent in Washington, D.C., even as I started to wonder: At what point in reporters to seek truth and report it, media coverage of happenings in the my career did I decide I couldn’t do but minimize harm. capital was drawing public rebuke. We anything to make journalism better? Their idealism is vaguely familiar to talked about a lecture we had both As it turned out, my conversation me; I know I had similar feelings in the heard in class earlier that week. The with Karyn was only the beginning of

8 Nieman Reports / Spring 1999 Young Journalists early days of my journalism career. As a tude that sometimes exists in news- other students agreed with Jennifer, 22-year-old, fresh-out-of-college re- rooms today. and I found myself nodding as she porter at a weekly newspaper in a small Obviously, there’s a cleft between spoke. Recognizing this linkage could community, I set out to inspire with my the public’s perspectives and journal- be a first step in regaining the public’s words. I think all of us must start our ists’ sense of proportion when it comes trust, I thought. first journalism job with these sorts of to certain situations, most noticeably This spring many of my 19 students dreams. We remember articles that perhaps in the recent Washington scan- will begin work at the school’s daily made us cry, ones that made us think, dal coverage. And there’s no question newspaper or television station. For ones that inspired us to act, and we that cleft contributes to the increasing most, this will be their first taste of want our readers to be affected by our absence of believability that the press “real” journalism. On the one hand, words in the same way. No matter how appears to engender with the public. I’m glad for the experience they will be much we pay lip service to “telling the My students, still part of “the public” getting; on the other hand, I’m sad- truth” and “being fair” and “fulfilling and not yet journalists, reminded me dened to think about all that will inevi- the public’s right to know,” I suspect of this disconnection with their reac- tably happen as they proceed along that each of us hopes that our byline tions to various ethical dilemmas we this pathway into jobs. Most likely they’ll will be the one at the top of inspira- discussed in class. start to embrace some of the journal- tional and groundbreaking stories. As I reflected on their comments, I ism “norms” they were so willing to But after two years of working at the realized that this gulf of distrust could challenge in class. community newspaper, I had become be a result of something a student tangled up in deadline pressures and named Jennifer pointed out in class. “The student’s my editor’s pleadings for “award-win- Her remarks echoed an idea I first read ning stories” and had forgotten my in an essay by former New York Times idealism could be the reasons for writing stories in the first reporter and columnist Anna Quindlen. best foe to this place. Like other reporters, I had be- In the essay, Quindlen described a beleaguered come numb because of too much ex- time she cried while interviewing the posure to the squawks of the police parents of a missing boy. Though she profession’s current scanner and too little contact with the realized the story was gut-wrenchingly lack of credibility.” people whose lives I was supposed to sad and knew the tears were a natural be reporting on. I had lost my motiva- reaction, she was still angry at herself I suspect this is something that hap- tion to pen the “best” stories, the kind for acting in a manner she thought was pens in every profession as young I hoped I’d write when I entered the unprofessional. “I thought that what people move into jobs where rules do newsroom. was the right response for a human matter and were developed with good I hope my students don’t get to this being was the wrong response for a and meaningful intent. But if they for- point, but I am almost certain that reporter,” she wrote. get the arguments they made against someday, some editor will order one of I am sure Quindlen’s experience is those “rules,” the challenges they were my journalism students to break a trust common among journalists. Traits and once willing to make to them, then the or lie to a source to get the story. And “rules” that make us good reporters profession will have lost another op- I’d predict that someday, some pub- are often quite different from those portunity to keep itself fresh and hon- lisher will kill a story one of them has that make us decent citizens in our est and self-reflective. written because it places an influential private lives. In other words, to do our I know in the future, unlike in the person in the wrong light. And I sus- jobs well as journalists, we must some- past, I’ll take opportunities to listen to pect that someday, one of them will times abandon the things we value interns and recent college graduates justify going with a story that just slightly most in friends, neighbors and role who other folks in the newsroom might misrepresents some facts because there models: compassion, honesty and re- dismiss as starry-eyed idealists. I hope wasn’t time to reaffirm them. spect for privacy, to name a few. that listening to their perspectives will Part of me wanted to prepare them When Jennifer raised this dilemma help me remember why I chose to for these eventualities in the “real in class, unlike Quindlen (and most become a journalist in the first place. ■ world” they will one day inhabit. But working reporters I know), she didn’t the other part of me didn’t want to see the two sides as irreconcilable. Robin Jones will receive her master’s burden them with the debris of my “Just because you’re a journalist, that degree from the University of Mis- own disillusionment. I wanted to al- doesn’t completely define you,” she souri in May. Before returning to low their idealism to remain firmly said. “I think a lot of journalists are school in 1997, she worked for two intact because I think it’s exactly the under the impression that it does. You years as a news and sports reporter thing journalism needs. Their idealism have to foremost be a human being and for The Half Moon Bay Review, a could be the best foe to this belea- then think like a journalist. I think the weekly newspaper in a small town guered profession’s current lack of answers [to many of our ethical dilem- just south of San Francisco. credibility, to the “good enough” atti- mas] would be clear then.” Many of the

Nieman Reports / Spring 1999 9 Young Journalists When Mediocrity Beckons

By William Brent Cunningham

ost of us know the frustration Today, at 33, poised finally to take poorly, exercised less and was more of desire outpacing ability. But that shot after a decade of rambling, I irresponsible in my relationships. I what about coping with the M am hesitant to squeeze the trigger. The never read anything other than news- reverse? What happens if you decide problem is that in the last 10 years I papers. I never spent a rainy Saturday you don’t want to live up to your po- learned there are things as important just cooking. In the winter, it was dark tential? to me as my career; maybe some that when I left home and dark when I The top is what we’re all supposed are more im- to be gunning for. The best and the portant. “For several years now I have watched brightest. In America, we don’t cel- Raising ebrate anything less. To aim elsewhere such ques- a friend’s single-minded climb up the is considered a waste of talent. tions makes journalistic food chain while the rest Growing up in West Virginia, the me feel like a of her life goes untended.” top of anything but the next mountain heretic in the seemed to me remote and unlikely. Yet halls of the Columbia University Gradu- returned. I worked weekends, holi- from the time I wrote my first story for ate School of Journalism, a veritable days. My entire social existence, slim as my college paper, The Parthenon, edi- mill for journalistic gods and goddesses. it was, was confined to my colleagues tors and colleagues have assured me My teachers here—many of whom have at the paper. Newspaper people are that I could go as far as I wanted in the made the stratospheric sacrifices—are without peer, but they are not the only journalism business. They meant, of echoing editors past with their shiny species worth knowing. course, the top. It was understood that predictions for my future in this busi- I loved it and hated it simultaneously. I should want it, so I did. Fifteen years ness. And why not? Surely one comes I cannot imagine making my living any later, I’m still wrestling that well-in- to Columbia to be a part of all that. other way, yet I fear its ability to devour tended prophecy. The end of the millennium has everything else I love. Regardless, you For a reporter, the top is a vague and people in reflective mode. Friends say, have to reach the top before such a shifting arena marked by only a hand- “Do what makes you happy.” But would flexible and varied life is possible, and ful of immovable icons—The New York they understand if my happiness that’s where the real sacrifice comes Times, The Washington Post, etc. But doesn’t include the high-octane career unless you are a genius or celebrity. tethered always to this notion of mov- we’ve all envisioned for me? How about For several years now I have watched a ing into the journalistic stratosphere is a summer of cooking camp in Italy friend’s single-minded climb up the the awareness that it takes more than instead, or a couple of years squirreled journalistic food chain while the rest of just talent to do so. It requires com- away somewhere writing another her life goes untended. I know plenty plete subservience to the goal. In the novel? What if my greatest happiness of people who would love to be where deliciously cynical undercurrent of means starting a family and actively she is, yet nothing she ever does is newsrooms, it can be a matter of pride raising the kids? Would they accept good enough for her. I don’t believe, to have one’s life in shambles, but still that as a mark of professional happi- through all that striving, she appreci- be destroying the opposition. ness? Would I? ates what she has already accomplished. At 23, my greatest fear was never It’s not that one can’t work in the At first I watched with excruciating escaping West Virginia and missing my stratosphere and do all these things, envy and self-loathing for not possess- shot at journalistic greatness. Since too. Some people manage it. But I ing similar courage and drive. Lately, then, I’ve spent four years at an after- don’t think I can. I know from my though, I’ve watched with something noon daily in Charleston covering poli- newspaper days that reporting con- akin to relief. There is still time for me tics, three years teaching reporting in sumes me once I commit to it. My most to make wrong decisions and recover. Hungary, and two years as a freelancer self-destructive stretch thus far was But the weight of expectations, my in San Francisco writing dull articles when I was giving 12 to 14 hours a day own and others’, real and perceived, about high-risk insurance products and to a newspaper. I drank more, ate has me reeling. People expected me to the computer trade.

10 Nieman Reports / Spring 1999 Young Journalists be like my driven friend. So that’s what The school’s career services office pro- some reason the lure of the strato- I expected of myself. Yet at every turn, vides a weekly listing of various intern- sphere persists. Maybe it’s habit, or I have opted for the path that led else- ships and fellowships worldwide. maybe it’s the proximity that Columbia where, to other pleasures in other ar- Through this, I have applied for several affords. eas of my life. two-year internships at larger papers Another friend fled the drive to the When I left my newspaper job, for in cities where I would like to live. I stratosphere when she was about my example, the obvious next move for would prefer an actual staff position to age and moved outside the city to seven someone headed to the stratosphere was to a bigger paper in a bigger mar- ket. I went instead to Hungary, where I traveled and wrote a novel that may never be seen by anyone other than those few friends I trust to be kind. It was there that I first began to question whether the lifestyle I had always envi- sioned for myself was something I re- ally wanted. I was in Eastern Europe in the early 1990’s and simply ignored my big chance to establish a toehold as a for- eign correspondent. The opportuni- ties were there and people I knew were taking them. I took, instead, cooking and language classes and spent long hours reading books I’d missed over the years. It’s something I’ve tried hard to regret since coming back home, but I’ve never been completely able. I understand the idea that you can A newsroom for journalism students. Photo courtesy Medill School of Journalism. do good work anywhere. That this no- tion of big-time journalism is an inter- nal—an individual—thing. But I only an internship, but I suppose if I can’t acres and a dog. From this bucolic agree up to a point. If everything but make them want to hire me in two base, she tends her extensive garden, my career fell away, my dream job years, it wasn’t meant to be. And I writes the freelance stories she wants would be the freedom to write about know that the likelihood of being of- and pays the bills with a handful of whatever interests me anywhere in the fered a full-time job at the end of an steady corporate editing gigs. She takes world. Only a precious few journalists internship varies from paper to paper. great pleasure in the fact that corpo- have anything approaching such a job. A two-year intern stands a better chance rate America is subsidizing her radical And only a few publications can afford of being hired than a summer one, but journalism. to indulge such a desire. The best of some things are beyond your control, Do what makes you happy. If only it the best. such as the availability of a job when were that easy. ■ Clearly then, this desire exists some- your time for review comes up. Still, I where in me. I came to Columbia, at have more experience than most of my William Brent Cunningham gradu- least in part, to figure out exactly where fellow students, and am ready for a ated from Marshall University with this desire resides and how strongly it staff position. So I will focus more a degree in journalism and a could burn. Perhaps, despite the be- intently on finding a full-time job this master’s degree in comparative liefs of friends and colleagues, I could spring, both through career services politics. He worked for four years at never reach the stratosphere, anyway, and my own contacts. The Charleston Daily Mail and even with 10 times the drive of my In recent years, I have grown enam- taught reporting at the American driven friend. The question now is ored of urban living, and plan—ini- Journalism Center in Budapest whether I’ll ever know. tially anyway—to limit my job search before arriving at Columbia’s So here I am, almost armed with a accordingly. If I come up empty, I will Graduate School of Journalism. degree from Columbia’s J-school. My either suck it up and look to smaller shot is clearing, and in May it will be markets or move back to San Fran- mine to take or not. In the meantime, cisco, land of the alternative lifestyle, I am at least preparing to take it, if not and try to string together a living that as aggressively as perhaps I should allows for many loves. I may ultimately given the cost of my time at Columbia. choose the latter regardless, but for Nieman Reports / Spring 1999 11 Young Journalists Falling in Love With Words and How Journalists Use Them

By Kathryn S. Wenner

don’t particularly like thinking didn’t want to have to keep on moving taken unforgettable courses with about what I might do after I earn to wherever I could find the next big- former USA Today National Editor Carl Imy master’s degree in journalism. ger-market job on my way to a network Sessions Stepp and American Journal- J-school, for all the work and worry, is job which, once I got there, might not ism Review Editor Rem Rieder. I was more fun than any job I’ve ever had. It be what I wanted anyway. My heart just one of a small group of students who feels like a great indulgence. wasn’t in it. And, of course, my per- met weekly last semester for Q and A A year ago, I was fortunate to be able sonal life stank. At 29, I looked at sessions with Washington Post jour- to walk away from a job I hated and an women like Diane Sawyer, then in her nalists and legends such as Leonard occupation, publications editing, that early 40’s and unmarried, and thought, Downie Jr., George Solomon and David barely kept me awake. For four months, forget it. There’s got to be more to life S. Broder. Why would I want to think I swam, read, had lunch with friends, than an all-consuming, so-called glam- about life after J-school? cleaned house, cooked dinner and orous job. Last June I came home from I go around and around in my head spent relaxed, delightful days and that first day of journalism class and about what I might do after gradua- nights with my husband, Mark, and our told Mark, “Everything has changed. tion. The central conflict seems not an three dogs. By the end of May, when I You’ve never seen me like this before.” unusual one. I want it all, every day: turned 40, I felt great. Dean Callahan, who loved news and challenging and creative work, time Two days after my birthday, I walked newspapers like no one else I’d ever with my loved ones, time to do laps in into Associate Dean Christopher met, reminded me of everything I had the pool. And there’s one more re- Callahan’s beginning-level reporting loved about journalism and being a quirement. Whatever work I do has to and writing class for graduate students journalist: the blood-pumping chal- be in or around Washington, D.C., be- at the University of Maryland College lenge of getting the whole story exactly cause Mark, harmonica player and front of Journalism. I said I was there to right in a ridiculously short amount of man for a blues, rock and soul band improve my writing but, truth be told, time; the reverence I feel for the vital that’s been a local institution since the I wanted to know if I had what it takes role the press plays in a democratic 70’s, is not about to move anywhere. to produce a good news story because society, the mental quickness and forth- From everything I’ve heard—in class, I’d concluded that a) I am compelled rightness that characterized the news- from friends who’ve worked at papers, to work with written words and b) paper journalists I knew in Roanoke. from journalists at The Post—report- most of my favorite writing these days At last I had the chance to concentrate ing at a daily is not for me. The hours, is by journalists, especially in maga- on learning how to gather the parts of the pace, the prohibitions (at The Post, zines such as Harper’s and The Oxford a story and tell it well, regardless of at least) on contributions to nonprofit American, and I want to learn how to how my hair looked. organizations, all conflict with who I write like they do. I wanted to give I’m now in my second semester at am. I have also heard, repeatedly, that journalism one more shot. Maryland. Aside from my course work, the best way to develop into a great Eleven years ago, I quit a budding I am a graduate assistant to Knight journalist is to spend years as a re- career in broadcast journalism. I left a Chair Haynes Johnson, whose name I porter at a daily. Whenever I read an wonderful morning anchor slot at the first heard during Watergate, when my article I think is especially well-writ- number one news operation in mother would read excerpts from his ten—a New Yorker profile of Gail Roanoke, Virginia, because I could not Washington Post stories and say “I just Zappa, a Village Voice story about a bear to look ahead at more years of love that Haynes Johnson.” I’m even teenaged murder suspect, to name two writing about fatal fires, drunken ho- getting to do some research for his recent examples—I feel a gnawing un- micides and car crashes. Nor did I want current book project about the United ease that I might never reach my poten- to use my appearance, my voice and States at the close of the 20th Century. tial as a journalist because to have what my personality to present those kinds I don’t have time to clean my house, I need to be healthy and happy I must of stories to viewers day after day. I also and I rarely cook anymore. But I’ve set boundaries on my professional life.

12 Nieman Reports / Spring 1999 Young Journalists

I’ve never heard anything to make me starts to feel to be able speak out and pendent-minded publishers will suc- think that setting strict personal bound- act when I sense that by doing so I ceed on the Internet. aries leads to finding meaningful work might make a difference. Sometimes I think I’d like to go to at a daily. I’ve paid attention during the four work with an on-line publication, al- This summer I’m going to explore decades that have so far comprised my though I am not sure the accelerated magazine work as an intern at Ameri- life. And there are, as Dorothy Allison, pace of that medium would coincide can Journalism Review. I love to read author of “Bastard Out of Carolina,” with my desire for the slower rhythm magazines and to hold them and page says, two or three things I know for offered by a weekly or monthly. As a through them, feeling the paper, ex- sure. At the very least I need to be able consumer, I’ve grown accustomed to amining the typefaces, studying the to contribute my money to a few orga- getting my news on line and, like most design. The idea of eventually being nizations whose work I believe is es- everyone I know, spend hours every able to freelance is appealing. Working sential to making the world a better day reading, writing and listening to at a publication that uses freelancers place. Whether I want to use my jour- music on my computer. I’m among seems like a good way to find out a little nalism skills to advocate particular those who have the highest hopes for about that part of the business, al- causes or issues is something I have not the Internet’s ability to protect and though I know it’s a hard way to begin yet decided. enhance free speech. I’d love to do an a journalism career. Still, I think I need I’ve thought a lot about some of the internship at an on-line magazine or to spend some time writing news sto- disturbing issues that now confront journal, to absorb the lessons of cyber- ries on a regular journalism: scandal publishing and just to be around the basis. I’ve also feeding frenzies; pri- kind of pioneers who are advancing learned, in all the “From everything I’ve vate lives as news; this new medium. types of work heard…reporting at a increasing depen- This brings me to my bottom-line I’ve attempted, dence on anonymous consideration as I try to figure out that I need a daily is not for me. sources; unethical which way to go once my golden days mentor or two to The hours, the pace, practices; weakened at Maryland are over. Whatever I end help push my the prohibitions on foreign coverage; ris- up doing needs to include being a part skills forward. If ing public distrust of of the journalism community. I love I’m lucky, I contributions to non– journalists; declining being in the company of print journal- might get those profit organizations, readership, and how ists. The best I’ve met are annoyingly needs met, for a all conflict with who the consolidation of independent in thought and action. while at least, at media ownership af- They love words. They pay attention to one of the Wash- I am.” fects our jobs. And what is happening around them. With- ington area we’ve discussed each, out them in my life, my thinking would weeklies. To meet clip requirements in sometimes ad nauseam, in my classes. be narrower and my world smaller. my courses, I’ve done some reporting Although these issues concern me Meanwhile, I’ll enjoy being a middle- for the Gazette weekly newspapers in deeply as a citizen, with the exception aged kid in an academic candy store. I Montgomery County, Maryland, where of the last two they do not figure into have figured out how to make my stud- I live. Covering community news here my thinking about my future career. ies last until sometime in 2000. By is as much fun as it was in Roanoke First, I have set for myself high ethical then, maybe these thoughts and de- when I started out reporting for a radio and professional standards; I know sires might clarify themselves into an station, even though I had not at that from my experience on previous me- obvious next step. And perhaps I’ll be point studied journalism. dia jobs that I am not afraid to say no or as lucky—and as energized—when I One of my future-job fantasies is put my job on the line if asked to do take that next step as I was when I that I fall in love with covering Mont- something I believe is wrong. Second, walked into my first journalism class. ■ gomery County. Then, in a couple of I’ve seen how quickly change occurs. decades, Mark and I move to a village in In the last five years, for example, Kathryn S. Wenner is a master’s Vermont and I spend my final years at Internet technology has opened up degree candidate in journalism at a small family-owned newspaper with unlimited possibilities for publishing the University of Maryland, College impeccable journalistic standards. I and marketing the printed word. At the Park. She was a news anchor and wonder, though, about my ability to same time, “public journalism” initia- reporter at three different television adhere to the norms of what it means tives have created fresh approaches to stations in Virginia during the to be a journalist and refrain from news coverage. Though its configura- 1980’s, then worked at a variety of taking a stand on political and commu- tion may change, and the ways we Washington, D.C. organizations nity issues. Broadcast news and J-school reach it may be in transition, I have no before deciding to attend journalism have taught me to investigate issues doubt there will continue to be an school. from as many angles as possible, but audience for substantive, probing jour- the older I get the more important it nalism. Also, I am convinced that inde-

Nieman Reports / Spring 1999 13 Young Journalists Teaching Journalism by Adhering to Unchanging Standards

By Nancy Day

onfession: I actually went to called me an “intern,” so I was immedi- gone, I’ve been hanging out with teen- journalism school. And now I ately time-warped to a student mindset. aged journalists ever since I was editor Cteach in one. But I’ve also spent But I was an intern with chronic déjà of my high school newspaper. plenty of time in newsrooms, a dual vu. I’d been told by grizzled veterans One disturbing quality many young perspective critical to good journalism nationwide, people my age who’d people share with veteran journalists education. stayed in the trenches, that newsrooms today is cynicism, distinct from healthy When I first switched from a San had changed a lot and that the business skepticism. But how can they help it? Francisco newsroom to a Boston Uni- wasn’t as much fun as it used to be. I They are exposed to infotainment, re- versity classroom to teach basic report- thought it was fun to be a reporter spected anchors hawking their books ing in 1981, I viewed it as temporary. I again, finding myself in new places, on network news, hyped “true life” was resettling in the East with my hus- meeting new people, learning new stories, celebrity gossip masquerading band, who’d earned his doctorate from things. These were all reasons I loved as news. And some of my best students Harvard the same year I was a Nieman journalism in the first place. tell me they can’t afford to go into Fellow (1979), and our newborn daugh- What did surprise me was that news- journalism, especially newspapers, ter. Now that child is a senior in high rooms literally still looked almost the because low starting salaries won’t put school and I’m still teaching at B.U. same as they had 15 years earlier when meaningful dents in student loans. (A Whew. Perhaps it’s time to reflect: Is I had my last full-time job in one. good argument for the terrific journal- this an honorable calling? Is journal- Men were mostly in charge and there ism educations offered at many public ism education necessary? How did I were far fewer minorities working in institutions, but small comfort to stu- develop my journalistic values, and them than at my last permanent news dents struggling to meet the costs of how do I pass them on? post, The San Francisco Examiner. I large private universities.) I’m now Co-Director of B.U.’s On- was less surprised to find that news- Other students are turned off by Line and Print Journalism Program. room technology was behind that of invasions of privacy committed in the That title alone conveys key technol- many universities, since that was the name of the people’s right to know. ogy changes from when I was an un- word brought (or E-mailed) back from They get upset at the rudeness of re- dergraduate at the University of Illi- student interns and recent graduates porters and incensed at the misalloca- nois, taught by men in suits pacing up of my program. In the end, my news- tion of news resources where swarms and down clanging rows of typewrit- room reentry that summer (I also of reporters cover the same story while ers. Yet those professors emulating worked at The Examiner and The Bos- many other important stories go un- gruff city editors were doing what I still ton Globe other summers) helped me covered. I tell my students at the start consider crucial in educating future to feel confident that our journalism of each semester that they will learn to journalists: making classrooms as much curriculum is on track. Although some be more sophisticated news consum- like newsrooms as possible. The co- of the ethical dilemmas faced by tundra ers as well as more logical thinkers and nundrum for schools of journalism is reporters were dramatically different writers. We discuss “trial balloons,” hiring professors who can build on in detail than those of urban reporters, ethical lapses, omissions and commis- real-life careers and keep current, nei- the soul-searching was similar, as were sions, and we deal with a new chal- ther falling into the “war story” trap conceptual debates about whether the lenge in teaching reporting: getting nor having no stories at all to tell. daily newspaper should be concerned some of our high-tech students to do In 1996, I returned to a city room as with breaking news in this age of com- in-person and telephone interviews for part of a program designed by the peting media or in writing more maga- their stories. They’d rather get all of American Society of Newspaper Edi- zine-style pieces of depth and style. We their information from the ’Net. tors to reacquaint (or, in some cases, should do both and we train students Many of our best graduates are lured acquaint) professors with today’s jour- accordingly. by on-line jobs, but soon find that the nalism. The Anchorage Daily News Because of the way my career has initial excitement of going with a brand-

14 Nieman Reports / Spring 1999 Young Journalists name company in a big city wears off mingham church bombings. His spare fews for women students. My final edi- when they spend their shifts repackag- language and vivid detail made us feel torial series was on abortion, then ille- ing bits of news reported by someone the horror of those girls’ deaths with- gal. In my conference on the series, else into a flashy Web presentation. out ever telling us what to think. Gra- Graham looked at the paper, then at Some of our more satisfied graduates ham made sure we knew the back- me. “This is good,” he drawled, a self- are ones who took jobs in the boon- ground and context of what we planned described “good old boy” from Ten- docks, covering and uncovering news to editorialize about before we dis- nessee. “But does your Daddy know that’s critical to the functioning of com- gorged our undergraduate opinions. you’re writin’ about this?” munities and that no one else is writing It was the academic year 1967-68. Given today’s sensibilities, his re- about. They know they are making a Protests against the Vietnam War were mark would have been considered sex- difference, getting immediate feedback escalating, even at the socially conser- ist. I just laughed, savoring my teacher’s (tips, criticism, accolades), being vative University of Illinois, with its rare compliment. In those days, class- known around town as “the reporter”— huge engineering and agricultural col- rooms and newsrooms were more for- in short, practicing journalism. leges, and, when I started, strict cur- mal; professors and editors dressed in Many in my generation are con- cerned about diversity, but many of my students don’t think it’s an issue. Of course, I don’t recall dwelling on these issues myself until I’d been in the work- ing world awhile. For quite some time now, the majority of journalism stu- dents have been female, yet the major- ity of our faculty is still male; the chairs of all three departments and the dean of the college are all men, with female support staff. Whether you’re a good writer, reporter or teacher is not deter- mined by gender, of course, but I won- der about the impact of these daily visual reminders. I often hear from former students, now journalists, who call to ask my opinion about whether treatment of them and their stories is happening because of something any- one might encounter, or is it because of being black? A woman? Latino? At this point, the questions they ask me are very different than when they were students. A few don’t even deal with such issues as gender, appear- ance, ethnicity, unless they choose to. In my own education, the best teach- ers I ever had were two remarkable middle-aged, white, male journalists. (Of course, I never had an opportunity to compare this with what impact women professors might have had.) The most intense course I took, includ- ing later studies at Stanford and Harvard, was Editorial Writing from Gene Graham, also the first person to mention the Nieman program to me. He made us read extensive histories of Indochina and introduced us to the writing of Malcolm Browne, David Halberstam and Ward Just. He showed us a piece he’d written about the Bir- Pages from Gene Graham’s Nieman year sketchbook.

Nieman Reports / Spring 1999 15 Young Journalists jacket and tie. I don’t recall feeling any thought I was under strain from my they can point students. It is essential discrimination or discouragement, al- divorce and should “ease up” on grad- that teachers have track records in what though I was adamant that I not be ing, suggesting that my student evalu- they’re teaching and that they maintain assigned to the women’s page on my ations would improve, everyone would those ties through freelance, summer first newspaper job, the summer I was be happier, and my merit pay might or consulting work. The theory doc- 19. It was clear to me what was women’s even be higher. tors—those who teach about a profes- work. I knew I did not want to do it. Hearing this made me miss the “old sion they never practiced—have a place When I first taught, I tried to emu- days” at the U of I. Professors were not in academia, but it’s a separate one, in late my Illinois professors. I dressed in there to try to make students happy. departments addressing communica- suits and was very strict. Following the Such an idea would have been com- tion as a social science. I’m pleased dictates of Graham, a Pulitzer winner, pletely foreign. They were there to that where I teach the university recog- I flunked students if they misspelled a teach good journalism, perhaps to in- nizes this distinction, with the Depart- name or reported inaccurately. “I al- spire us, but basically to prepare us for ment of Journalism now headed by a ways feel like throwing up after your the real world where, if we got the former ASNE president, and a different class,” one young woman confessed. I name wrong, it could ruin a reputation home for mass communications, ad- required students to report each mat- and we—and our employer—could be vertising and public relations. ter addressed at a City Council meet- sued for libel. This was serious busi- I wish Graham were still teaching, ing, in declining order of importance, ness, and we’d better learn it right or but the health problems that propelled just as I had been taught. I sent them to get out. There was no coddling. Grade him from his Nieman year to Urbana court and called the prosecutors and inflation hadn’t hit, nor had the pres- got worse and multiplied. It was only defense attorneys to check their facts. sure we now are under to accept ex- after his death in 1982 that his widow, If they garbled the story, they got bad cuses. We didn’t know much about sorting through his things, found a grades and had to rewrite. their personal lives, and they didn’t notebook from his Nieman year in My best training as a teacher came know much about ours. It wasn’t con- which he had sketched seminar guests. from those long-ago lessons of Gra- sidered relevant. She sent it to Cambridge. Now those ham and another former newspaper- But as much as the encompassing sketches are framed behind glass and man then at Illinois, Charles culture has changed, the qualities that hung in a place of honor. I think of him Puffenbarger, known to all as “Puff.” As make a good reporter have not: strict and his legacy each time I’m at a longtime colleague of his once ob- attention to detail, fairness, thorough- Lippmann House. served, it was “not that he dealt conde- ness, accuracy. I’m partial to reporters There is not one path to becoming a scendingly or too softly, as one might who want to fulfill those watchdog and good reporter or a good journalism suspect of a professor known to stu- spotlight roles, keeping a watchful eye teacher. I hope those who teach also dents openly by his nickname. He was on whether taxpayer funds are being continue to “do,” through programs demanding, and expecting the best of wisely used by public servants, illumi- such as ASNE’s or endeavors they de- his students, very often got it.” nating the hidden corners of our soci- vise. I hope the elite institutions, such Expecting the best. Demanding. ety, and empowering the powerless. as Harvard, will offer meaty courses in Being there for students. The best journalists, whatever their the theory, practice and ethics of jour- A lot of people go into teaching not media, are always going to be the ones nalism, a field with a pervasive influ- to nurture the next generation, but “to with energy, passion, persistence and ence on our lives. And, most of all, I have time to write.” How many times confidence—enough to go after the hope that students drawn to journal- I’ve heard that, in interviews with pro- story, but not so much that they sel- ism will find their own Grahams and spective faculty or casual conversations dom have second thoughts about Puffs to guide them with grace, wit, when people ask what I do. They want whether they could have done better. empathy, humility and humor. to know what I’ve written lately. Often, After 17 years of teaching journal- Remembering them reminds me that it’s comments on a student’s paper, ism, I’m much more relaxed. I tell teaching journalism can be an honor- not for publication and certainly not students the class is informal and flex- able calling. ■ under my byline. Good teaching is a lot ible, but the standards are not. By far like good parenting: it takes quantity the best aspect of this job is discovering Nancy Day is Co-Director of the On- as well as quality time and a healthy great young journalists. I often keep Line and Print Journalism Program mix of discipline and support, all time- coaching them by E-mail or phone calls at Boston University where she is consuming tasks. while they’re wrestling with stories, also an associate professor. She is a A few years ago, I was called into the with difficult or indifferent editors, with 1979 Nieman Fellow. then-chairman’s office. He told me he whether to make a job change. If jour- thought I was being too hard on my nalism teachers haven’t been working students. They shouldn’t be failed for professionals, they won’t know how to one or two little mistakes, especially if respond to these questions, nor will “they are trying hard.” He told me he they have a network of folks to whom

16 Nieman Reports / Spring 1999 Young Journalists Using the Realities of the Newsroom To Train Journalists

By Helen Ubinas

y high school journalism of Coke and candy to get the paper out. So I took the lessons I learned at teacher gave me one piece of The school newspaper consistently NECCO—listening closely to the voice M advice before graduation: won awards, often beating out papers of my advisor there—and interned at “Major in anything but journalism.” from more prestigious four-year col- as many papers as I could. I wrote a few In his defense, he had a point. Al- leges. The paper’s advisor, Joseph articles for the school newspaper as though it took an unproductive year LeBlanc, pushed us to excel and was well, but mostly I interned for Bay State studying political science at the Uni- also a strong advocate of internships. Weeklies, writing stories for The Cam- versity of Connecticut and a slew of His enthusiasm for them pushed me to bridge Chronicle, The Somerville Jour- jobs, including a stint as a fry cook at want to do one myself. nal and The Watertown Press. By the McDonald’s, to figure out exactly what Classes in journalism, which I also time I left Boston University for a job at was so right about his advice. took, covered the basics—news and The Hartford Courant in 1994, I felt In time I realized he wasn’t warning feature writing, copyediting. But it was prepared for a career in journalism, me to steer clear of journalism. He was the hands-on experiences both at the and I knew I could offer my editors telling me that preparation for being a school paper and in my internships more than a degree acknowledging the reporter would take many forms other that was so valuable. courses that I’d passed. than what I could find at a prestigious In time, I became Editor of the pa- My first year at The Courant was J-school with reputable professors and per and, at the same time, worked on exactly what I expected from a newspa- theoretical classes on the ethics of the my internships as stringer for a Span- per job and from a career in journal- profession I would eventually enter. ish-language publication and as a re- ism. I was assigned to report on This is something I came to learn porter at several community newspa- Hartford’s neighborhoods, telling sto- almost by accident. After asking “you pers. ries about people who before a daily want fries with that?” one too many When it was time to move on to section about the city was introduced a times, the horrors of boring, low-paid complete my four-year degree, I year earlier were rarely, if ever, repre- jobs sent me running and screaming to thought again of my high school sented in the paper, even though the the closest school that would have me. teacher’s advice. But by then I was newspaper carried the city’s name on I ended up at Northern Essex Commu- pretty certain that what he meant when its masthead. I had a supportive editor nity College (NECCO) in Haverhill, he said not to major in journalism was who also gave me feedback—some- Massachusetts, for no other reason than that I had to make sure I could offer a thing I later learned is a rare commod- its close proximity to my home and my prospective newspaper employer more ity in this business. unwillingness to waste more time and than just a degree in journalism. So I Now, nearly five years after I gradu- money at an expensive four-year col- majored in print journalism at Boston ated from Boston University with that lege. As things turned out, I couldn’t University and chose a concentration degree in journalism, I’ve had time to have picked a better school for me to in Latin American studies. reflect on the lessons I learned along attend at that point in my life. Compared with NECCO, Boston the way. Although NECCO lacked the big- University’s School of Communication Above all, journalism school infused name professors and programs other offered a more diverse selection of me with the enthusiasm for this profes- schools had, it offered me exactly what journalism classes—ethics, communi- sion that I think it takes to be a good I needed to realize that writing was cations law, the history of journalism. reporter. My professors at both col- what I wanted to do for a living. The And while there were opportunities leges were talented, supportive, cre- students, many who like myself had for hands-on experience like I’d had at ative individuals who were not only taken the scenic route through school, NECCO—such as the school’s daily good teachers but also, very impor- were motivated and passionate about newspaper—there were also crowds tantly, talented, working journalists. their studies. The school newspaper’s of students waiting in line for an op- Because they kept themselves fresh student editors were a core group of portunity to write for it. As a transfer about the profession by working in it as eager and aspiring journalists who student with a limited amount of time, well as training us for it, their guidance worked through many nights on diets I couldn’t afford to get in the queue. was something I believed in. They pre-

Nieman Reports / Spring 1999 17 Young Journalists pared me well for the mechanics of working at a newspaper. They talked and taught leads, got us to be serious about meeting deadlines, even had us trot out our inverted pyramids. In terms of course work, there were required writing, copyediting and eth- ics classes that ranged from practical to theoretical. But while the course work was both instructive and, at times, in- spiring, it was also flawed in some areas. Even some of the basics weren’t quite there, as I’ve found out on the job. For example, some of the comput- ers I learned on weren’t compatible with any of the systems at the papers I worked for. After talking to many col- leagues, I learned it’s a problem that plagues journalism schools across the country and has for many years. Copyediting was another basic For two days in late September, Bebe sold the crack cocaine rocks known as “Cookies” in course that received mixed reviews. I the pouring rain—cold and alone. While other kids were in school that morning, Bebe still use some of the lessons to edit spent his day doing his job. Photo from Helen Ubinas’s series, “Mama can you save me? today. However, advice I received about Children in Peril, Parents in a Desperate Struggle.” Photo by Brad Clift, The Hartford counting headlines by the point have Courant. gone unused, and even if someone asked me to do it today, I couldn’t remember how. “I would have rather used that class time learning more about editing and story structure,” a colleague said about her copyediting course at the University of Connecti- cut, where she graduated in 1993. Then, there were the ethics courses that one of my more vocal cubicle mates deems “worthless.” I spent many hours in ethics classes talking about issues like privacy and giving lots of thought to the possibility of tainting situations by our mere presence. While at the time I found my ethics class worth the time I spent in it, I later realized we spent too much time talking about esoteric issues. Consequently I never gave much thought to the more practi- cal and everyday situations I found myself in just a couple of years after graduation. Situations where, unlike class discussions, I was forced to act To live in the darkness, or to look to the future with hope? Otis sits on the edge: Will his first and think later. mother’s lessons about responsibility win out over the streets of Fair Haven, where a For example, a few years ago I did a blunt of marijuana or the quick sale of a $10 “rock” of crack cocaine offers immediate story on a teenage drug dealer. At about gratification? Late one night, Otis sits on a crate in front of his porch as his mother tells 4 a.m., as I stood with this dealer on a him what Fair Haven was like when she was a girl. She tells him she tried to leave the street corner, a car drove up and its neighborhood once, but couldn’t. “I’d miss the excitement,” she says. Photo by Brad occupants were looking to buy drugs. Clift, The Hartford Courant. The young boy handed them over, and the people then began to move away.

18 Nieman Reports / Spring 1999 Young Journalists

The boy pulled out a gun and forced away with this impression, or with the nalists not only how to write the best the couple who was in the car not only armor one needs to enter the fray. Nor story they can, but also how to fight for to pay for the drugs, but also to give is the jargon of daily journalism talked the stories they believe are important him all of their money. about a lot in any helpful detail in to tell, for the integrity of their profes- When all of this was happening, I classrooms. Whether the topic is bud- sional obligations, and for their words. didn’t have a chance to think about gets (and their impact on my ability to Besides telling them about the rush how my presence could influence this report a story the way I think it should you get as a journalist on deadline, I’d teenager’s actions. It was the next day be reported), or shrinking “inch counts” ask them to also prepare students for when I asked myself whether, because of stories, or “zoning issues” that im- the times when the newness of it all I was there, he was trying to prove pact my stories’ reach, I heard little wears off and you feel like a factory himself. Would he have done the same about this back in the classroom but worker chugging out eight-inch stories thing if I hadn’t been there? But by then think about it a lot now. that nine council members will read it was too late for me to report that But probably the most talked about and likely complain about. story differently. It was a reminder to issue in every newsroom today is the I’d ask them to role-play for these me that discussions about the ethics business of journalism and how corpo- future journalists how to handle them- and practice of journalism are impor- rate decision-making is impacting our selves the morning after someone de- tant, but students ought to be aware jobs. Journalism professors never cided to cut a paragraph for space or that, as I found in that situation, reflec- warned us about stories being done for inadvertently inserted a mistake and tive time is hard to come by. Instead, the sake of advertising. There was little, the first phone call they received was many times in the comfort of journal- if any, discussion about having a story from an irate reader. ism classrooms split-second decisions held until it was properly advertised— I’d ask them to teach students how made by working journalists are dis- until a team of advertisers and market- to stick in there when cynicism starts to sected and criticized in ways that make ers created a brightly colored sign for creep in, when you think no one is students think they will have the luxury the sidewalk newspaper boxes. No pro- listening or thinking about journalism of time to reflect about each and every fessor I had told me anything about or truth or the words that you just bled one of their moves. They won’t. having a story held for “sweeps”—a onto the page. Next to ethics, classes about com- time when a newspaper’s circulation I’d ask them, even now, to help me munication law seem to be about the numbers are counted. Or about busi- get through the times when I try to least favorite course offered at journal- ness reporters been told to write sto- remind myself why I got into this busi- ism schools. “Most of my studies in- ries for the newspaper’s marketing bro- ness to begin with. And then I’d ask volved memorization of law cases by chures and annual reports. them to keep advising me that I will now long since overturned in some I entered into journalism thinking find good reasons to stay. So far, their superior court somewhere, I’m sure,” of it almost as I would a marriage, as a advice has proved wise and has stood another journalist told me. Last I heard partnership in which everyone involved the test of time. the law cases I memorized were still is after the same things: truth, good It may sound a bit idealistic, but intact, but I can’t say I’ve ever felt writing, solid reporting and compel- these lessons are just the sort of things affected by them or referred to any of ling stories. In short, the pursuit of I would have been eager to learn more them at my job, at least so far. excellence. But as happens in many about when I was in college. Maybe it Without a doubt, internships remain personal relationships, partners some- takes being out in the field, working for the most valuable skill builder in my times grow apart, expectations change, a paycheck under real-life circum- journalism education. And other jour- needs get redefined, as do agendas. stances, to really absorb them. But from nalists I’ve talked with agree. Perhaps I once worked on a story about a where I sit today, I think it couldn’t this is because many of us were eager topic that had much relevance in the hurt—and it just might help—for a few to actually do something rather than city our paper is located in. But be- of these contemporary journalism situ- just study it. But there really is some- cause of an editor’s penchant for keep- ations to find their way into the train- thing to be said for dealing with real ing things “positive” in his hometown, ing that prepares us for this profession. stories, real editors and real deadlines. we were told to report this story from ■ Speaking about what makes jour- a city we did not normally report on. nalism training “real” leads me to an- When the piece was published, that Helen Ubinas is a reporter at The other issue that is rarely talked about in community regarded the article as nega- Hartford Courant, where she covers classrooms. Anyone working in a news- tive and not surprisingly both the con- the city. She has worked at The room can tell you that newsroom poli- tent and the fact that we’d left Hartford Courant since 1994, first covering tics are a reality. From perceptions to to do this story caused an uproar in Hartford’s neighborhoods, then misconceptions and everything in-be- that neighborhood. reporting about the surburban town tween, newsrooms are the natural habi- Knowing what I now know about of Rocky Hill. tat of political animals. Yet to sit in the business side of journalism, I’d ask journalism classes, one wouldn’t walk my professors to teach want-to-be jour-

Nieman Reports / Spring 1999 19 Young Journalists On-Line Journalism: Frustrations Along the Road to the Future

By Stephen Borelli

knocked on the coach’s office door lot tougher to do our job well. allows readers to open their front door in the visitor’s clubhouse at Durham The SportServer is the main sports and pick up a fresh paper with nearly IBulls Athletic Park. artery of Nando Media, the new media every click of their computer’s mouse. “Come in,” said Stump Merrill, the hub of the McClatchy newspaper chain. Stories and information, either ac- gruff manager of the Columbus (Ohio) The SportServer provides round-the- quired from major news services or Clippers, the top minor-league team in clock sports news and statistics and is produced by one of the six members the New York Yankees’ system. I opened sprinkled with feature stories and pho- on the SportServer’s editorial staff, are the door, and the bald, pot-bellied man tos. We are like any sports page except added and updated constantly through- peered up from his lineup card. that our immediate posting of news out the day and night. “Hi coach,” I began. “My named is Steve Borelli. I’m with an on-line sports news service called Nando Media.” Merrill squinted and his mouth opened slightly. “I’m doing a piece on one of your players, Mike Lowell. I was wondering if you had a minute.” He shook his head, saying it was too soon before game time. A Columbus Clippers beat reporter was surprised when I told him about this in the press box. He said Merrill is usually accommodating to all mem- bers of the media, even ones he doesn’t know, and even one hour before game time—out of fear that any snuffs and snarls might get back to Yankees owner George Steinbrenner. But Nando Me- dia? It was nobody significant. Such is the plight of so-called “new media,” or Internet journalists. While in the minds of many we are what the future will be, we’re still stuck in the realities of the present. As a 24-year-old climbing the jour- nalism ladder, I’ve found my nine and a half months as an editor and reporter for Nando’s SportServer at times re- warding, at other times aggravating. Whether it has been in dealing with grizzled sports veterans like Merrill or long-standing sports organizations like the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC), we have had a difficult time getting access and respect that matches that of more traditional news media outlets. Without those ingredients, it can be a

20 Nieman Reports / Spring 1999 Young Journalists

The mission at the SportServer is to ketball tournament isn’t televised in At the print publications where I get news up on our site first and fast, their area, so they go to our special worked leading up to this job—Base- then cover it more completely and ac- March Madness site to check out our ball America magazine, The Washing- curately than anybody else. During my in-game scoreboard. ton Post, The (Memphis) Commercial office shifts (which I do four days each My work in the office involves much Appeal, the Pensacola (Fla.) News Jour- week), I will post an Associated Press moving of information from various nal—often I could spend more time story detailing how the Denver Bron- sources onto our Web site. One time it crafting a story, or even a headline, cos won the Super Bowl, hopefully meant quickly getting a picture up on than I can now. On an average of one to before CNN/Sports Illustrated or our site of Mark O’Meara sinking the two days a week at Nando, I’m given ESPN.com does. I also want readers to putt that clinched the Masters. Or with more time to develop stories and I have other reasons to read the the death of former Kansas City Royals write features and columns both in and SportServer than just to see a write-up pitcher Dan Quisenberry last fall we outside the office to enhance our site’s on the big game. Maybe someone won- rushed to post his career statistics. overall coverage. The reporting I do dered how many career touchdown Sometimes work like this—the me- outside the office allows me to feel like passes Broncos quarterback John Elway chanical shuffling of information— I am employing the skills of a tradi- had in his Super Bowl career and goes makes me feel as though the reporting tional journalist. I satisfy my desire to to our special site devoted to the Super and editing skills that trained me for a write and find opportunities to main- Bowl to find out. Or maybe the game job in journalism are being woefully tain a visible presence in the sports involving their favorite team in the neglected. world, something my experience with opening round of the NCAA men’s bas- the Clippers’ manager reminded me is important. Coming to Nando was, I think, a good career move for me at this stage in my professional growth. For one reason, we cover major league sports for a national—in fact, an interna- tional—audience. Because of our au- dience, we don’t mess much with local interest stories, such as those involving high school and small college sports that I did often at my previous jobs. At Nando, I have had the opportunity to dive into coverage of major-league base- ball, major college basketball, the NFL and professional tennis. But there can be a downside, too, because there are times when we aren’t yet regarded as a legitimate news gath- ering operation. When I introduced myself to major-league pitcher Jimmy Key in the Baltimore Orioles’ club- house last season, he repeated the name of my employer—“Nand-oh Media”— like I worked for some Romper Room operation. When I was interviewing University of California baseball coach Bob Milano over the phone, I got a “Where are you from again?” after I’d asked only a few of the questions I’d prepared for him. When I asked a mem- ber of the University of North Carolina’s media relations department why we weren’t given a reserved spot for our photographers on the floor during their men’s basketball games, he said, “We don’t give everybody a spot, and the N&O already has two.” (The N&O is

Nieman Reports / Spring 1999 21 Young Journalists

Raleigh’s News & Observer, Nando’s equate cooperation with the media with ers. Sports information directors who sister publication next door. Even if it’s some kind of positive impact on their have granted us credentials to cover a regional newspaper, people in this bottom line. By contrast, while work- their teams’ games are now taking a area who have heard of Nando imme- ing for the promi- diately think we are part of that publi- nent print organi- “…he repeated the name of my cation because our title derives from zation in several employer—‘Nand-oh-Media’—like I its name. We aren’t.) similar-sized mar- In the pecking order of access, kets, my calls were worked for some Romper Room Nando usually falls behind print me- regularly returned operation.” dia, broadcast media and even some and access seemed new media outlets whose names con- automatic. look at our Web site, and their reac- tain within them the names of estab- But because Nando is on the tions to our coverage have helped land lished national print or broadcast orga- Internet, and society seems to be split us an ACC tournament credential for nizations. (For example, the Super Bowl between the Internet-savvy and the this spring’s event. people told us they just didn’t have the Internet-free, our success at gaining Our potential for gaining increased space to accommodate us, although access to an event or interview remains recognition is promising, but the wait our competitors CNN/SI and spotty. We managed to obtain a cre- is still frustrating. This was made very ESPN.com, whose Web sites are similar dential to cover last year’s U.S. Open clear to me while I was covering the to ours, were given media credentials.) tennis tournament, as the USTA. cre- U.S. Open and noticed that a Sports New media outlets which don’t have dentials coordinator follows coverage Illustrated reporter was granted exclu- this establishment backbone will surely of the world of tennis on our Tennis sive interviews with tennis players af- assume a much more prominent role Server. ter they had finished their post-match over time, but it will only happen as a Yet we’ve been denied credentials press conferences. For now, I can only generation of news and sports enthusi- at the Super Bowl and the ACC’s bas- watch such access with a grimace. As asts grows up reading the World Wide ketball tournament. The ACC had failed our reputation for skillful journalism Web as much as their parents relied on to see us as objective journalists who grows along with our faith in our young the front page. could potentially bring them an addi- company, my hope is that in a few years But for a person caught in this tran- tional audience. Rather I am convinced our reporters will garner the kind of sition period, at times the wait can be that they regarded us as competitors to respect that members of the traditional tiresome. In five years of covering their own Web site. While their Web media now enjoy. ■ sports, I have noticed that individuals site, like ours, consists of wire stories and sports teams often think about and statistics about teams and sports Stephen Borelli is a sports content their dealings with the media as a way within their conference, they perform editor and baseball writer for the of garnering free publicity. Circulation more like a college’s sports informa- Nando Media SportServer and a media outlet’s reputation turn tion department. While we are also a (www.nandomedia.com) in Ra- out to be directly proportional to the sports information source, we are a leigh, North Carolina. Nando Media kind of access its reporters get to a media organization as well, just like publishes The Nando Times manager or player. The more people newspapers and broadcast entities that (www.nandotimes.com) and the cover their SportServer (www.sportserver.com). “While in the minds of many we are games. what the future will be, we’re still When we do gain access to stuck in the realities of the present.” events, I have noticed we are who read about a team or its players, making some progress. North Caro- the more fan interest is generated and, lina, Duke and North Carolina State ultimately, the more money the team each provided access for us to report makes, or so the logic of this arrange- on their home games this during sea- ment goes. son, which gave us the chance to make Few in the sports world recognize important inroads with “face” time. By the name Nando or appear to have any late in the ACC’s regular season, Duke understanding about how our Web coach Mike Krzyzewski, North site—or on-line media in general—is Carolina’s Bill Guthridge and many of able to connect with many of the people their players recognized the Nando they want to reach. This can make it reporters and responded to—or very hard for me to establish a connec- evaded—their questions the same way tion with sources who have come to they did with some of their beat report-

22 Nieman Reports / Spring 1999 Young Journalists Riding the Digital Wave Into Journalism: Is It the Best Wave for Students to Catch?

By Stephen D. Isaacs

hat is this new media stuff? of ABC News) or radio interviewing skepticism, synthesis, accuracy, analy- Should journalists clasp it to with John Dinges (formerly with NPR) sis, integrity, probity, resourcefulness, Wtheir bosoms? Should schools or working as a front-line journalist on et cetera. Nowhere in there do I find of journalism require it? Should jour- a weekly newspaper in the gritty South what Quark Express 4.0 has to offer. nalism students be encouraged to study Bronx, what should my advice be? Except. A big except. If you want to it, to the exclusion of other, more tra- And how is my advice influenced by get a job as a copyeditor anywhere in ditional subjects? what I see around me, in all the ways in the United States of America, you’d I come from several generations of which the hard-nosed newspapering. A tradition “compunica- “Some of Columbia’s most talented of professional skepticism. Of the old tions” (the new media graduates refuse to even Mr. Dooley ethos: The role of the news- blending of paper is to “comfort the afflicted, and computers consider offers to start at less than afflict the comfortable.” In fact, my and commu- $60,000 a year.” pappy taught me, almost from birth, nications) “Never believe what you read, and damn revolution and its new digital tools better know Quark Express 4.0. That’s little of what you hear or see.” have already upended the news busi- the software tool that enables editors So along come these “new media,” ness beyond the imaginations of either to lay out newspaper pages at their whatever they are. Do these new ways Mr. Dooley or my dad? And that we desktops. Copyeditors—no matter how of communicating have anything to do ain’t seen nuthin’ yet. skilled, no matter how insightful, no with afflicting or comforting anybody? What do I advise when I realize that matter what their skills at converting What do they have to do with skepti- the average graduate makes $20,500 to hack copy to beautiful prose—can no cism? Or are they just toys? start, on average, at a U.S. newspaper; longer get a job without knowing And should the producers of most the average TV major makes $17,500? Quark. journalists these days (the nation’s 450 But starting salaries in new media aver- Except. Do you have the wherewithal schools and departments of journal- age $25,000 to $30,000 a year, while to pay back your graduate loan, not to ism provide more than 80 percent of the mid-level salary turns out to be mention those you accumulated as an new hires) be teaching what are essen- $75,000. Some of Columbia’s most tal- undergraduate? The difference be- tially mechanical skills to students who ented new media graduates refuse to tween $20,500 a year and $30,000 or end up with degrees in something even consider offers to start at less than even more suggests a pretty obvious called “journalism”? $60,000 a year. answer. Does Adobe PhotoShop Release 5.0 What do I advise when I know that Except. Most of us—editors, pub- add up to journalism? What does Quark this woman, age 28-plus (the average lishers, anchor men and women, re- Express Release 4.0 have to do with age of our incoming students this year porters, researchers, even journalism pursuing truth? And what do seminars is 28, and women comprise 62 percent professors—know that something re- in software like RealAudio, ProTools of our class) will have taken out at least ally big is afoot in our business. That and JavaScript have to do with what it $40,000 in loans to fund her nine the digitization of the world—that revo- is that makes good journalists? With months of education? (Students at the lution, that sea change—has hardly Mr. Dooley? With my dad? With jour- Columbia Journalism School now pay even started. Those new tools with the nalism? Hmmm. $26,506 in tuition and fees, plus 4.0’s and 5.1’s and 2.0’s dragging along When an enthusiastic and talented $12,850 to get by—frugally—in New behind their names are already wield- writer asks whether she ought to major York for nine months. That totals ing influence far beyond the algorithms in new media instead of studying maga- $39,356.) that drive them. They already are chang- zine writing with the likes of Victor Usually I reply that I think that a ing the traditional definitions of news, Navasky (formerly of The Nation) or journalism school should teach jour- of reporting, even of thinking. The fact television reporting with the likes of nalism. That means training in and that the House of Representatives chose Rhoda Lipton and Derwin Johnson (ex steady exposure to critical thinking, to release the report of the Indepen-

Nieman Reports / Spring 1999 23 Young Journalists dent Prosecutor on the World Wide days each week to learn how to work ing their skills in ways of gathering and Web signaled that we weren’t kidding with these emerging technologies. It is presenting news. Like the media com- around any longer. The new era was aimed at students who, despite all the panies that will be hiring them, these now under way. concerns above, are students Except. Except journalists should trying to create dif- “Journalists need to know aren’t so not let computer whizzes decide what ferent ways of enough to mold these new certain this new journalism will be. Journalists storytelling, of do- about ex- need to know enough to mold these ing journalism, and technologies into ways to actly what new technologies into ways to tell sto- at the same time ac- tell stories better, not just lies ahead ries better, not just better ways to soup quiring all these better ways to soup up in this up graphics and sounds and the like. new media tools. techno- Shouldn’t we really be channeling They take some rib- graphics and sounds.” logical our best and brightest into new media, bing from the other revolu- so that they, and not the Bill Gateses of students. They get labeled as “techies.” tion, but they do know the coming this world, can invent the future of our Or “computerheads.” Or “propeller- cataclysm will redefine much of what business? At Columbia, we wrestle with heads.” we consider journalism today. this dilemma constantly. What these media students are do- The new media students probably What we’re doing right now makes ing so far amounts mostly to experi- work harder than their 240 classmates some sense to us: We require all our mentation with merging various ways who take other, more conventional students—budding newspaper photog- of presenting news. Much of what this workshops. My office overlooks their raphers, reporters, editors, magazine involves is quite similar to what more workspace and frequently I see the writers and editors, radio commenta- than 5,000 newspapers around the same students working at their com- tors, television producers and an- world are doing on their Web sites, puters when I come in the morning “repurposing” text who were there when I left the night “Those new tools with the 4.0’s and that was originally before. And, despite my heritage that 5.1’s and 2.0’s dragging along intended for print. links me to the hard-nosed ways of my So far what they have newspaper legacy, my heart is really behind their names are already… created could be with them. It’s probably what I’d be changing the traditional definitions called new media doing if I were 40 years younger. ■ of news, of reporting, even of feature stories, com- prised of digital im- Stephen Isaacs is professor at the thinking.” ages, sound and text, Graduate School of Journalism and brought together to Co-founder of the Center for New chors—to learn a little about new me- tell stories in innovative ways. But so Media at Columbia University. dia forms of storytelling. They play far I’ve found few student reporters with PhotoShop, manipulating images. and producers who have figured out They create their own sites on the Web. ways to take full advantage of the re- They learn the theory and philosophy markable freedom unleashed by a lim- of communications and the role of itless news hole. digital math in that. They record audio The missing element in telling sto- digitally, then play around with their ries—so far, anyway—is full-motion sound bites as if they were so many video. When it becomes available via Legos. the Internet, news on the “net” might The concept underlying this ap- well drown out everything else. Prob- proach is much the same as “visual ably by next year technology will pro- literacy” that journalism schools insti- vide the capacity to send television tuted when television first exploded images across phone and cable lines, onto the scene. We regard digital lit- along with text, graphics and sound. eracy as even more important. We be- Then, when a reporter sets out to tell a lieve all students should graduate with 60-second news story by mixing in the the ability to comprehend whatever incomparable attraction of colorful changes are coming and be able to moving images, a whole new epoch in understand them and to incorporate the business of conveying news will them into their practice of journalism. have begun. For serious new media types, we In the meantime, our students are also offer a newsroom-oriented work- getting ready, learning to use the com- shop that gets them to devote two full puter tools they’ll need and broaden-

24 Nieman Reports / Spring 1999 Young Journalists Are Minorities Getting a Fair Shot At Journalism Jobs? The Answer is “No”: Now What Can be Done?

By Carolyn Toll Oppenheim

s a campus newspaper advisor, I My work as a former journalist had in the late 1970’s in a push for more felt defeated. The student news- taught me that these minority students diversity by the year 2000, according to A paper editors had just rejected needed to have solid campus newspa- “Winds of Change,” a 1996 study of a promising black journalism student’s per experience to qualify for intern- journalism education prepared for the coverage of a West African film festival ships and newspaper jobs. It was mostly Freedom Forum by Betty Medsger, she’d attended, and Helena Victorin white journalism students who gradu- former Chair of the San Francisco State was quitting the paper. She resigned ated with piles of clips and a couple of University Journalism Department. herself to looking for jobs in public semesters’ editing under their belts Helena Victorin, a thoughtful, digni- relations after graduation instead. She who moved easily from those intern- fied daughter of Haitian immigrants vowed this was the last humiliation she ships into newspaper jobs. But few who had settled in New Hampshire, would allow herself to endure after minority students had been able to stay was an elegant young writer who wrote struggling for years to become a re- with the process long enough to ac- for her high school newspaper. She spected member of the newspaper staff. quire these credentials. The conse- was using her college years to embark Just the month before I had been quence was a tougher time finding a on an intellectual discovery of her elated for her when she learned that journalism job after graduation. Ironi- ethnicity—as did students of many the college would pay for her to accom- cally, many newspaper internships— backgrounds. Helena assumed the stu- pany its own internationally acclaimed now filled mainly by white students— dent newspaper would regard campus African-American film professor, Claire were originally created by newspapers activities of ethnic discoveries as news- Andrade-Watkins, to Burkina Faso, to the Pan-African film festival, an event that attracted Robert Redford, Spike Lee and other innovative and success- ful filmmakers from around the world. Now, the Emerson College editors’ refusal to publish her pieces as “not newsworthy or of interest to the gen- eral student body” was a blow to both of us. As advisor to this campus weekly from l989 to 1996, I had been explor- ing questions of how to foster diversity at the student newspaper. This small communications college was bubbling with a growing population of talented, lively minority students eager to pre- pare for careers in film, television, the- ater, print and broadcast journalism. They brought richness of culture, ideas and perspectives from everywhere— African-Americans, Latinos and Asians from all over the United States, Puerto Rico and Central America, many of them Students from the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, children of immigrants from Jamaica, Berkeley. Photo by Jim Vestal. Barbados, Haiti, Dominican Republic, Nigeria, Cameroon and South Africa.

Nieman Reports / Spring 1999 25 Young Journalists worthy events, such as the coverage of allowed us to learn firsthand about the Table in San Antonio never broached the African film festival. The point at value of diversity on a newspaper. what is driving those minority youths which she gave up the struggle, she Twenty years later, I optimistically away, what keeps them out of the “pipe- told me, was when she concluded that embraced the challenge of student line” where they are so desperately racism and not ignorance underlay her newspaper advisor. I was determined needed. And the ASNE report appears editors’ disregard for stories of interest to work to help the students create a to avoid any in-depth examination of to minority students. college journalism environment so di- why the country’s major journalism Helena had served as an editor one verse and visionary that they would programs have failed to produce mi- semester at my urging. I had hoped the become leaders in renewing the spirit nority graduates with the same campus other editors would come to know and evoked by the Kerner Commission be- newspaper and small paper internship respect her, as I did, and consult her on fore its 30th anniversary took place. experiences as white graduates. The news decisions. Instead, they regularly Yet by the time I left Emerson in l996, solutions proposed in the report ig- challenged her news judgment on is- I felt I had failed, just as other dedi- nored the campus failure by looking to cated campus newspaper advisors who historically black colleges and high “She concluded that write in College Media Advisor seem to schools with large minority popula- feel as they write discouragingly about tions instead, completely dodging the racism and not their experience with this issue. critical questions. ignorance underlay The failure of journalism schools to ASNE may not have realized what a her editors’ graduate minorities ready to take their hot potato they were dumping on the places in the nation’s newspapers is a doorstep of journalism school deans. disregard for stories problem the President of the American Did they know that bringing statistical of interest to Society of Newspaper Editors is spot- goals for racial parity into a higher minority students.” lighting. This past December he held a education community already bitterly powwow with journalism school deans, polarized about affirmative action is issuing an urgent call for them to “hurry like throwing a hand grenade into a sues of concern to her, like coverage of up and place more minority students war zone? Yet that is precisely what Black History Month, a Nation of Islam into the pipeline for journalism jobs.” America’s campuses have become—a speaker, and racial incidents in the This “tough love” approach was sweet- dormitories. The constant battles to ened with hints of up to $3 million “…this past October, defend her perspectives, alone in the from the Freedom Forum being made newsroom, became an ordeal as the available to J-schools that could devise ASNE was forced to polarization intensified. Students open smart proposals for solving the “pipe- publicly admit its to her points of view told her privately line problem.” At the “Round Table on own failure to they were afraid to defend her. I be- Attracting Minority Youth to Journal- came increasingly frustrated at my in- ism,” ASNE’s Executive Director Lee achieve its diversity ability to help these students to em- Stinnett confronted the deans with a goals for the year brace diversity as a positive force in study of their colleges’ failure to gradu- 2000.” their common experience of produc- ate minority journalism students—with ing a newspaper. the requisite campus newspaper and This was a goal of mine that found internship experiences—at rates nec- zone where brigades of shock troops, its roots in my own newsroom experi- essary to increase the already too-low engaged in bitter struggles to deter- ence. I first came into The Chicago percentages in most newsrooms. mine our national policy on affirmative Tribune newsroom in 1968, just one Getting journalism educators to re- action, have chosen to fight their war. year after I’d earned my journalism spond seriously to those cold figures The center of this battle zone is the degree at Michigan. It was the time dropped onto the roundtable is critical campus newspaper. These battles have when women and minorities were be- if newsrooms are ever to achieve the been so highly publicized that I have ing hired in response to the northern industry’s diversity goals. Just this past been able to teach media ethics this urban riots, the women’s class action October, ASNE was forced to publicly semester—here at Indiana University, lawsuits, and the Kerner Commission admit its own failure to achieve its where I am a visiting professor—using Report. Suddenly papers searched for diversity goals for the year 2000. Clearly case studies about the campus press talented minorities who until then had ASNE needs the journalism educators from stories in major newspapers. In been unable to break into the ranks of to get on board with the industry’s January, 15 elite campus newspapers reporting and editing. The sudden gath- now-revised goals for racial parity in published a full-page advertisement ering of such a diverse group of new the nation’s newsrooms by 2025. from the Center for Individual Rights reporters, all women and minorities in Yet the gathering of 60 editors, jour- (headed by former Secretary of Educa- our 20’s, working together, hanging nalism educators and media founda- tion William Bennett). The ad urged out and getting to know each other, tion officials at this December Round students to send for a booklet telling

26 Nieman Reports / Spring 1999 Young Journalists them how to file class action lawsuits Some journalism professors freely with another Emerson graduate, from against their own universities for using told classes they viewed pressures for a Barbados. Their idea is to cover the race as one consideration in admis- multicultural focus in the curriculum islands as real places where people live sions. Recent assaults on affirmative as a violation of academic freedom. normal lives, operate businesses, prac- action in higher education further po- These messages created a chilling ef- tice professions, and not merely as larize campus newspaper staffs. The fect on some white student editors tourist playgrounds for rich Americans. advisors and student members of the whom I saw grappling with a desire to Another of my former students, Carla campus journalism community have diversify their campus newsrooms. It Mozee, an African-American-Mexican become isolated, not unlike when confused young, well-meaning, inex- 1995 graduate, was one of the few multicultural Sarajevo was surrounded perienced white student editors about minorities who did manage to tough it by zealous nationalists. which news values were the “right” out as campus news editor, but at a high cost. “In terms of the school pa- per, I saw an opportunity for myself and I took it because I knew I would have to do this if I wanted a career,” she told me in a telephone call from her office at National Public Radio’s UCLA- based “Marketplace” business show, where she now works and can occa- sionally be heard on air. “I wanted people to know about news that affects everybody, and I knew I could do it. But I hated the racism in the Boston and Emerson environments. It was the first thing I woke up with and the last thing I went to bed with for four lonely years. I was obsessed with it. On the one hand it dragged me down and made me angry all the time, on the other hand I learned a lot about the real world.” Carla’s willingness to hang in there at any price made it possible for me to recommend her for an internship so Students at the Medill School of Journalism. Photo by Brian Bahr. Carla was able to land a journalism job after college. While the system will produce an occasional Carla, by re- If ASNE needs campus newspapers ones: traditional, colorblind, melting quiring minority students to pay that to help produce experienced minority pot values that envision the world as a kind of price for their ambition, we journalism students to reach its diver- mainstream with minorities who are have not created a system that is work- sity goals, it cannot stay neutral. Stu- marginalized, or a new view of commu- ing in the way it should. dent newspapers—regarded on most nity that has at its core a multiplicity of Journalism programs cannot suc- campuses as “student clubs”—can’t be diverse populations. ceed in producing diverse student jour- expected to transform themselves into Most minority students dreaded the nalists, whites and minorities working preprofessional training grounds in the loneliness and isolation of spending together, if they are left to grapple with middle of a college climate polarized long hours editing in newsrooms filled this problem alone. I have come to by the culture wars. The shock waves of with white students, neither belonging believe that campus advisors need ag- the 1994 publication of Charles Murray nor feeling understood. Helena came gressive outside support from profes- and Richard J. Herrnstein’s “The Bell to feel this way. Today she works at a sional journalism organizations like Curve” still reverberate through col- small marketing and public relations ASNE, Freedom Forum, the Poynter lege communities. The October 24, firm and lives at home with her parents Institute and others, if we are to create 1994 cover stories of the nation’s to pay off her more than $20,000 in a system that works for all students and weekly news magazines featured schol- student loans. She hasn’t abandoned turns out generations of young jour- ars debating the intelligence of African- her hope of becoming a journalist, but nalists prepared to work together in Americans and questioning the value says she will never try again in the diverse, inclusive newsrooms. of affirmative action on campuses—a United States. Instead, she dreams of I offer some ideas that I know would debate that rages again. starting a small paper in the Caribbean have helped me to assist ASNE in reach-

Nieman Reports / Spring 1999 27 Young Journalists ing its diversity goals: more on looking beyond the cam- in the spirit of the first Unity ’94 • Develop programs that attract both pus culture for ways to apply these conference in Atlanta. By emulating minorities and white students: Loren values to the job of journalism. this association on our campus, with Ghiglione, Emory University jour- • Mentor and finance diversity with our small numbers of each group, nalism Chair, obtained Freedom scholarships: ASNE should find foun- we created a strong feeling of syn- Forum funding for his innovative dation funding for full scholarships ergy and community. It became a program offering his students— for newspaper editors with diverse vehicle for reaching out for speakers white and minority—two-month staffs, to reward white and minority and mentors among journalism pro- paid internships on South African campus journalists for incorporat- fessionals in Boston. newspapers preceded by courses on ing diversity, and to make it possible South Africa. Ghiglione, a former for all low-income students who oth- If the professional journalism com- president of ASNE who as a small- erwise could not serve as editors, munity needs the campus experience town newspaper editor and pub- because they need to work, to ob- to engender a better understanding of tain campus journal- the meaning and value of diversity “White student journalists need ism experience. White among its journalism graduates, then student journalists the campus newspaper community to be rewarded for working need to be rewarded needs help in turning students’ focus towards diversity in a campus for working towards outward to the professional journal- environment which now makes diversity in a campus ism world and away from campus cul- environment which tural wars that are too often a fertile them defensive about now makes them de- breeding ground for racism. advocating those values.” fensive about advocat- After several years of personal re- ing those values. flection, I realize that some of my stu- lisher for 26 years in Southbridge, • Induce curiosity about diversity with dent journalists and I were trying to Massachusetts, hired and trained awards: Something else that brings carry the banner for professional jour- numerous minority journalists, was results in journalism is honoring nalism values in a hostile climate where asked by Emory two years ago to what is desirable with prestigious diversity was targeted as “advocacy for revive its journalism program. In awards. If ASNE or another well- political correctness.” This placed us two years he has achieved a minority known journalism group were to in an untenable position, one that did student rate of 20 percent, a full 10 give awards for quality student jour- not lead to achieving results any of us percent above the university’s own nalism about race and class issues, wanted. ASNE must find creative and minority rate. Foundations should that could encourage sheltered and supportive ways to nurture the editors offer funding to other campuses for inexperienced student editors of all and advisors to the campus press. Un- developing similar programs in other backgrounds to spend time and ef- less they do, neither the diversity goals multiracial societies, perhaps the forts on these issues, while cultivat- they set for themselves nor ones I think Caribbean or Hawaii, for example. ing staffers who can report, write most in our profession would like to • Mentor and finance student editors and edit those stories. see reached will be achieved. And in 2025, it will be left to another genera- through organizations: ASNE should • ASNE should immediately pay for form a national society of campus tion to admit defeat and push the due mixed groups of campus editors to date up by another 25 years. ■ newspaper editors, to hold meet- attend Unity ’99, the second gather- ings accompanying the ASNE meet- ing of the national conventions of ings, with financial aid to attend. Carolyn Toll Oppenheim is a visiting the African-American, Latino, Asian professor of journalism at Indiana This would provide a forum in which and Native American professional student editors would have incen- University, Bloomington, and a journalism associations, this sum- prize-winning former reporter for tives to adopt professional standards mer in Seattle. They should also and model their own newsrooms on The Chicago Tribune and Chicago fund Unity coordinators to put on Sun-Times. She edited a book on professional lines. As ASNE plans to workshops for the campus press. meet its own diversity goals, student American Jewish opinion on public editors will learn that the profession • Lastly, ASNE should urge local edi- affairs called “Listening To Ameri- has economic as well as moral rea- tors’ groups and local chapters of can Jews.” She taught journalism at sons for adopting a different ap- minority journalism professional as- Emerson College, where she devel- proach to cope with the kinds of sociations to visit campus news- oped the college’s first and only racial tensions and conflict raging rooms and invite campus editors to course on reporting on issues of on campuses. They will see that their local gatherings. In l994 I formed a cultural diversity. success upon graduation depends minority students journalism orga- nization at Emerson College that we called Unity Journalists of Emerson,

28 Nieman Reports / Spring 1999 Journalist’s Trade

The Education Beat: Dynamic Changes in How Schools Are Covered

In education, it’s the era of accountability. Teachers are tested to measure their ability to instruct. Students take standardized tests to find out what they have learned and where they rank compared with others. Controversy and debate swirl around the education community as some experts challenge the legitimacy of particular tests while others argue about what the results tell us about what is happening inside our schools.

In the midst of these debates, the job of reporting on education is changing, too. No longer is coverage of school board hearings and school-day events enough to satisfy the primary consumers of this news—parents. Today some newspapers are reshaping what the education beat can be by combining their own independent numerical analysis—made possible by computer- assisted reporting—with old-fashioned shoe-leather investigations. Some papers issue annual Report Cards on how well schools are doing. The grades they give are based not on handouts from school districts but on their statistical analysis of data they have pushed hard to obtain. The combination can be powerful, as some of our Nieman Reports correspondents point out.

In this section, we hear about such efforts in Omaha, Nebraska and in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and from a person who has trained reporters in the techniques of such reporting.

From there, we travel to Charlotte, North Carolina, to learn how the mixture of reporting approaches helped unravel the complex story of educational disparities among rich and poor school districts.

Then we head to Lexington, Kentucky, for a look at how one newspaper analyzed the often illusive and controversial issue of teacher quality and weighed its impact on student achievement.

Our final two articles explore two other approaches, both of which rely more on immersion in the community than on data. In Los Angeles, an experiment is in the making as both the editorial and business sides of The Los Angeles Times take up the challenge of ensuring that all children be able to read at grade level by the end of third grade. And in Seattle, a reporter was given a rare opportunity to devote an entire school year to reporting everyday details of one school’s life to illuminate the educational issues confronting teachers, administrators and students. ■

Nieman Reports / Spring 1999 29 Journalist’s Trade Using Education Data to Build A Story’s Foundation

By Carol Napolitano

or at least a decade before The King described it, “a Omaha World-Herald published great reluctance.” Fits five-part series “The Learning In 1995, a man- Gap,” we had been searching for ways agement restructur- to provide parents and the public with ing left Mike Finney, a meaningful understanding of how the newspaper’s Ex- students’ scores on standardized tests ecutive Editor, in were connected with what was actually charge of the day- happening in our schools. to-day operation of Before we found a way to do this, the newsroom. A the Omaha School District—the state’s former high school largest with about 44,000 students— English teacher, released only subject scores on the Finney had a great California Achievement Test (CAT) for interest in educa- the district as a whole. Those scores tion issues. He also didn’t tell the public anything about had been a Deputy the performance of individual schools. Managing Editor at “We would compare them to the The Minneapolis previous year and to the national Star Tribune, where norm,” said World-Herald Executive reporters were con- Editor Larry King. “The only analysis ducting their own we did was ‘Is it better or worse than computer-assisted the year before and the year before data analysis as a that?’ Those trend lines tended to go way of providing up and down, up and down. It was more in-depth re- hard to make sense of what it meant.” porting. Finney The public, including parents, had wanted the Omaha no idea whether some schools were public schools to performing as well as others on the give us the CAT tests. They could not compare how score data so we math scores in a math/science magnet could conduct our school, for example, compared to math own analysis of it. Parents assist children in a fourth grade math class. Photo by scores in other schools. And, in a dis- “This was impor- Bill Batson, The Omaha World-Herald. trict desegregated through busing, they tant information did not know how scores of schools that every parent, with busing programs compared with every teacher and, in fact, every stu- cies we need to make the kind of schools the scores of neighborhood schools dent ought to have access to,” said we want.” that did not have busing. Finney, who now is President and CEO Despite the logic of our argument Editors and reporters asked for more of World Media Co., an Internet com- and the fact that the scores are public specifics, and the district began releas- pany owned by The World-Herald. “In record, getting this information proved ing scores by school and by grade. But knowing exactly what is going on, we difficult. In 1996, after repeated re- when in the early 1990’s we requested have the best chance of making the quests, we threatened to sue, and the the CAT scores by race there was, as decisions we need and the public poli- district finally agreed to release the

30 Nieman Reports / Spring 1999 Journalist’s Trade data. We received scores for nearly 70,000 students who were given the test between 1992 and 1996. The data did not contain students’ names, but it did identify the grade, school, gender, race and home ZIP code for each stu- dent, as well as whether the student received free or reduced-price lunch— an indicator of poverty. After much deliberation about how best to examine the scores, we decided to limit our initial study to the district’s 58 elementary schools and to use a multiple regression analysis. That ana- lytical technique is a statistical proce- dure that can be used to explain the differences among data, in this case Photo by Bill Batson. differences among the CAT scores. The regression procedure calculated what the CAT scores were predicted to be, taking into account socioeconomic in- formation about the students and the neighborhoods in which they lived. Once we had this information about predicted scores, we could look at how schools actually performed and com- pare these two measures. Such a com- parison had the potential to offer in- sights about student and school performance that had never been made available before to parents and the general public. The school district had been doing a similar regression analy- sis for the past several years to assess the performance of its schools. But it would not release its results, even to members of the school board. Our analysis showed that in a third of the schools, the gap between actual and predicted scores was statistically Photo by Kiley Christian Cruse. significant. In both affluent and low- income areas, some schools scored sig- nificantly lower than the statistical completed, we knew there were sig- For two weeks, this team of report- model predicted while some scored nificant differences between predicted ers spent every day observing in class- significantly higher. When we showed and actual performance at certain rooms and interviewing teachers, prin- the school district the results of our schools. What we didn’t know were the cipals, parents, students and others. regression analysis, officials said their reasons why. To learn more, we needed Some evenings, we would attend after- results were nearly identical. Only a to do some old-fashioned, on-site re- school functions. At the end of most few schools ranked differently. Never- porting. Using our data, we chose five days, our reporting team would meet theless, the district told principals and pairs of schools to visit. Each pair had and exchange information. As the days teachers that the newspaper’s approach student bodies with similar demograph- passed, we began to see patterns was irresponsible. ics, but one school had CAT scores emerge from our observations. Schools “They were contending to their own significantly higher than its predicted scoring better than predicted had these staff that we were not to be trusted with scores and one had CAT scores signifi- things in common: this,” said Paul Goodsell, a lead re- cantly lower. Each of five reporters • Experienced and creative teaching porter for the CAT scores project. took one pair in order to see any differ- staffs who stayed at the same school After our regression analysis was ences in how the schools operated. for long periods of time

Nieman Reports / Spring 1999 31 Journalist’s Trade

needed to be trained properly in how to do complex analysis of data and statistical software had to be purchased. Most of the money went into the hiring of two consultants to help us learn these new computer-assisted report- ing skills and into the staff time it then took to properly analyze the data, in- terpret the findings, and decide on how to use the results to guide tradi- tional reporting. Consequently, the entire project took about seven months. With fully trained reporters and properly equipped computers, Finney said, this type of story can be done inexpensively and much more quickly. Nevertheless, reporters and editors must understand the limitations as well as the possibilities of statistical analysis and that no story is completely con- • Effective classroom and school dis- student-level scores. That has allowed tained in the numbers. While such cipline us to do other education stories analysis helps us to construct a strong • Substantial parent and community prompted by our analysis of data, such and detailed foundation, the soul of ■ involvement in the school as one that showed a federally funded the story resides in our schools. • The ability to recognize and address program to improve math and science shortcomings in the school. skills among minorities was having a positive effect. We also have done our Carol Napolitano is Project Team These patterns provided us with own analysis of standardized test scores Leader for The Omaha World-Herald daily themes for our series that ap- for other school districts in the region and also oversees computer-assisted peared over five days in April 1997. and published those results. reporting. During the last months of Since that series ran, the Omaha While he can’t place a dollar figure the CAT scores project, she returned school district has routinely released on it, Finney said the newspaper’s in- to school to earn a master’s degree the results of its own regression analy- vestment in the CAT scores series was in communication with a speciality sis and continues to provide us with considerable because the reporters in research and applied statistics.

Photos on this page by Bill Batson, The Omaha World-Herald.

32 Nieman Reports / Spring 1999 Journalist’s Trade A Newspaper’s Report Cards Offer Revealing Insights into How Well Schools are Doing

By Neill A. Borowski and Connie Langland

arents stand up to speak at school A report card on schools is but one Some of the best measures of school board meetings, clutching a copy example of the type of data analysis districts in The Inquirer’s Report Card Pof the newspaper. The dog-eared now being conducted by newsroom turn out not to be numbers at all. Much newsprint is the source of research specialists that formerly was reserved of the report is filled with traditional, that buttresses their comments. for the academic researcher or social in-depth reporting on the schools by School officials pore over the news- scientist. While a researcher’s study the newspaper’s education staff. We paper, looking for academic trends in might take months or years to com- also devote space to what we call “Points other districts or studying how their plete and publish, a newspaper can of Pride”—a non-numbers feature that district’s test scores stack up against turn around an analysis of test scores, allows school superintendents to tout districts of similar demographics. for example, in a few days. The statisti- features of their district that make them People relocating use the informa- cal tools and methods used by the particularly proud. It might be a cham- tion we analyze and publish about newspaper often are the same as those pionship marching band, an effective school districts as a guide to where to of the researcher. after-school tutoring program, or an buy their home. The 1997 Report Card covered 164 abundance of National Merit Scholar In an editorial, a suburban weekly public school districts in southeastern finalists. Their points are edited only newspaper points to the metro daily Pennsylvania and South Jersey, plus for clarity and are included in each newspaper as the authoritative source the giant Philadelphia school system district’s profile. of information on school spending. (which has 22 sub-districts called “clus- Our Report Cards also aren’t large The Philadelphia Inquirer has found ters”). In 1998, nearly 100 non-public enough to print all of the relevant data its first two annual Report Cards on the high schools in the Philadelphia region about each district and school. There- Schools to be not only good journal- were invited to be a part of the 1998 fore, databases that include test scores, ism, but journalism with a broad im- report. The response was remarkable, financial information and other nu- pact on its readers. “Accountability” is covering virtually all major Catholic, merical information from state sources the buzzword in public education to- Quaker and private schools. as well as our own superintendents’ day, and school report cards help read- The section served up timely, com- survey are available through The ers hold their schools accountable. This prehensive data in such areas as spend- Inquirer’s on-line Web site. is newspaper journalism that doesn’t ing, teacher experience and salaries, These databases are heavily used by end up on the curb waiting for recy- class size, test results and SAT scores. A Internet surfers. The New Jersey De- cling day. It’s daily journalism with a small part of the data came from state partment of Education links to our shelf life. databases. However, by the time the presentation of its data from its Web Like many newspapers, The Inquirer state’s data is made public it is already site. We frequently hear from parents, has found that teaming education re- outdated. To include the most up-to- researchers, realtors and librarians who porters with computer-assisted report- date statistics possible, The Inquirer have come to rely on our on-line edu- ing analysts results in a powerful tool conducts its own survey of school su- cation databases.1 to assess the successes and failures of perintendents. In the printed Report Cards, the local schools. The Inquirer’s first Re- Simply presenting the data doesn’t most striking differences among port Card, called “A District In Dis- mean a report is complete. The news- schools can be found in test scores. tress,” looked only at the Philadelphia paper must try to guide readers in However, a basic problem with such city school district in 1994. Three years interpreting the numbers. At the same scores is that they are on a school level later, a 20-page Report Card was pub- time, though, journalists must ask them- only. We have no individual student lished. Last September, the Report Card selves just how far can a newspaper go data. Test scores also have been found had grown to a 30-page broadsheet in rating how well schools are doing to bear a strong relationship to the section. their jobs. student’s income. However, at the

1 The 1998 Report Card is available at http://home.phillynews.com/packages/schools/ The New Jersey data is available at http://home.phillynews.com/packages/njschools/njs98.asp

Nieman Reports / Spring 1999 33 Journalist’s Trade

school level in Pennsylvania, we have ers”—schools performing far worse rated against other schools of similar only the percentage of students eli- than expected—are flagged for on-site income. This kind of analysis is some- gible for free or reduced-price lunch as reporting. Reporters contact these thing that parents and educators had the proxy for income. New Jersey edu- schools to learn more about what is no access to prior to our publication of cation officials have attempted a better happening there each day. Overachiev- this data. In fact, school district offi- demographic indicator, which rates ing schools, for example, might em- cials call us to ask for extra copies of school districts by family income, edu- ploy innovative teaching methods that our test score studies. cational attainment of residents and could be shared by other schools. Readers have seized upon the re- other factors that are related to test The Inquirer also uses the test scores port as essential to their understand- results. Yet New Jersey’s “district factor to rate schools in two ways: 1. How the ing of how the schools are performing. group” measurement is on the district, school ranked compared with all other And The Inquirer views the Report not the school, level. schools of the same grade in the state, Card research as the foundation for the Even if we were able to get indi- and 2. How the school ranked com- reporting we do on education issues vidual student data from the schools, pared with schools of similar demo- and controversies about teaching meth- there are educators who maintain the graphics in the state. ods or school performance that might standardized tests are seriously flawed The first ranking (using quartiles, arise. An added benefit is that the Re- as indicators of student performance. which breaks data into four equally port Card strengthens communications Is one elementary school not doing its sized parts, each representing 25 per- with readers. We include the E-mail job as well as another elementary school cent of the schools) is broad and of addresses of the education team in the across town if its third-grade test scores limited use. It should come as no sur- annual section as well as a special E- are lower? How large a difference be- prise that the wealthiest school dis- mail address for the Report Card. We tween test scores is significant? How tricts populate the top 25 percent of received well over 100 E-mail notes do you adjust for variations in the num- schools, and the poorest populate the and numerous telephone calls from ber of students taking the tests each bottom 25 percent. We have, however, readers. Last fall, orders for a special year? These questions shouldn’t halt found the second ranking elicited some reprint of the section arrived in our an analysis of test scores, but they surprises. The schools in Pennsylva- office before we’d even published it in should make the newspaper—or any nia, for example, are broken down in The Inquirer. That reprint then went analyst—realize a test’s measurement our analysis into five equally sized into a second printing and, so far, 7,000 capabilities aren’t absolute. groups (quintiles) based on the per- additional copies have been sold. ■ We use the test scores both in the centage of students eligible for free or report and for guidance in our stories. reduced-price lunch. Then, within each Neill A. Borowski is Director of A first step each year is to run a regres- quintile, schools are broken into Computer-Assisted Reporting/Analy- sion analysis looking at the relation- quartiles based on their test scores. A sis at The Philadelphia Inquirer. ship of test scores to income. “Over- relatively wealthy school might fall into Connie Langland is the lead educa- achievers”—schools performing far the top 25 percent of all schools in the tion reporter for the annual Report better than they should have, given state but fall to the bottom half or Card on the Schools. their income level—and “underachiev- bottom 25 percent of all schools when

34 Nieman Reports / Spring 1999 Journalist’s Trade Using Education Data Effectively

By Sarah Cohen

fter two years of traveling the the problem by making it clear to edu- district, in an independent analysis the country working with reporters cators that it’s the newspaper’s or median or average score could be cal- A and editors on computer-as- station’s job to provide information to culated by school along with the per- sisted reporting techniques, it was clear parents, not to hide it. They let “the centage of kids who took the test. that no story invokes more fear than experts” know they won’t be deterred Instead, school officials present a the dreaded annual school report. Edi- from getting this important informa- series of pre-made calculations to re- tors know educators will complain. tion to parents. The experts can help porters, turning 10 columns of infor- After all, the experts say, each student them make it as fair as possible or they mation into hundreds: the percentage is different. Parents demand impartial can live with—and furiously debate— taking the test by ethnicity, the per- reviews of schools—until their the results. Still, reporters are often left centage of each ethnic group passing, children’s schools are shown to fare on our own to figure out ways to mea- the percentage of high achievers, and poorly. And school administrators say sure the quality of the schools we cover, the like. Then they provide fields for it’s not just unfair but also downright and often on deadline. Here are five the school, the district, the county and destructive for journalists to try to do tips to help guide journalists through the state. In the end, their numbers anything other than repackage their the minefields of data. These tips are and analysis amount to a sea of num- press releases. culled from numerous discussions with bers with little meaning. And the data These complaints, though, fly in the reporters and their editors who are they provide turn a rather straightfor- face of what the school systems them- tackling this kind of project annually. ward analysis into a nightmare for some- selves do. After his rankings of school one just starting out in computer-as- districts was published in the paper 1. sisted reporting. one reporter heard from the man who So fight for all the information it is was principal at a school he’d attended. Fight for Student Level Data possible to get about individual stu- The principal complained that his dis- One of the key failings of many school dents, not schools. You may have to trict did not score as well as he had report stories is that they rely on statis- sign away some rights to use the data. expected, arguing that there were too tics generated by the school systems. A caveat common in the use of com- many factors that numbers could not This problem is driven by the way these puter files on children (and patients in data are of- health care) is that you won’t try to fered. In- track down anyone you find through “The newspaper’s or station’s job is to stead of pro- the data. provide information to parents, not to viding a Just be sure you’re allowed to inter- hide it.” database of view students in the schools—as way basic infor- of illuminating what the data demon- mation about the students (with names strate—without trying to find an indi- take into account. The reporter re- and exact addresses redacted), the vidual student. minded him that the school system schools provide hundreds of summary never had trouble labeling him as an statistics. This makes the analysis a lot 2. underachiever based only on standard- harder than it has to be. Copy Someone Else’s ized test scores and grade point aver- A skilled reporter needs to know ages. Apparently, it only became unfair only about 10 things about each stu- Methodology when the schools, not the individual dent to generate meaningful summa- Don’t try to reinvent school rankings students, were being graded. ries. For example, if you had the grade each year. Although reporters grow Some reporters, including the ones level, ethnicity, reading test result and bored with the same annual analysis, writing in this issue, have addressed math test result for every child in the parents appreciate consistency. And

Nieman Reports / Spring 1999 35 Journalist’s Trade

it’s not always even necessary to come lems the kids bring as a result of the stand out as a public service, but it can up with a ranking system on your own. impact of lower family incomes. also counter the criticism that there are You can borrow a method from others U.S. News & World Report dubbed many ways to measure the performance who have spent more time studying this kind of adjustment “value added,” of a school, and the newspaper chose how best to present this information. and includes it in the annual ranking of to illustrate its case with only one or Education Week, for example, grades colleges. It’s a good signal to parents two. school systems across the country each that what is being graded is the school year in its Quality Counts project. The system, not the children. Of course, the biggest tip is one that researchers there have spent years try- is so obvious it doesn’t require its own ing to come up with a way to compare 4. heading: Write in depth about schools, one school with another, one district teachers and students rather than rely- with another, and one state with an- Go Beyond the Report Card ing on the numbers to tell the story. other. Borrow their techniques and In Baltimore, reporters examined the Focusing on schools that do well—as ask for their help. experience of teachers in inner-city well as on those that don’t appear to be Also, look for any standards devel- schools. Reporters there found that working to their potential—will result oped in your state to measure school the least experienced teachers were in compelling stories. Finding teachers performance. In Maryland, for example, assigned to the most difficult schools. and administrators who have come up the state has threatened to take over As soon as they got a little experience, with ways of organizing a school or schools that fail to meet certain stan- they moved. teaching a particular subject that works dards. This yardstick is written into the In Broward County, Florida, report- well for students is also a way of telling regulations and provides a good least ers found that, despite a court order, essential stories about education. So is common denominator. schools in minority districts have re- reporting that uncovers complacency ceived little extra money to bring their in teachers or burdensome regulations 3. facilities up to par with schools in or rules that serve to hold back kids Define “Quality” Early On wealthier districts. And “Remember that the grading is of the One of the big criticisms of school in Charlotte, report stories is that they’re subjective. North Caro- job that educators, administrators and As school kids might put it, “And your lina, a legislators are doing, not the kids point?” Of course a ranking or grading groundbreaking themselves.” of schools is a qualitative, not a purely story in Janu- quantitative, endeavor. There will al- ary detailed ways be an element of opinion in your the potential effects of returning to who might otherwise succeed in school. work based on what you choose to neighborhood schools at Ground Zero Put the numbers in their place, in measure and exactly how you combine of 1970’s-era forced desegregation. charts and on line, and let reporters go those factors. Be prepared to defend About half of the region’s children out and illustrate with words the sto- your choices. would attend schools with virtually no ries that are responsible for the num- The best reason for doing this kind diversity if the busing were to end. bers we can now reveal. ■ of independent analysis is your job as a These stories and others use the watchdog of local educators. Remem- data that generate the school report Sarah Cohen was Training Director ber that the grading is of the job that cards to focus their reporters in terms for Investigative Reporters and educators, administrators and legisla- of the ongoing coverage of education Editors, Inc. for two years and trav- tors are doing, not the kids themselves. news. eled the country teaching computer- Staying focused on grading the adults assisted reporting techniques to reporters, editors and producers. She is the reason that many reporters ad- 5. just results to account for the difficul- was recently hired as the Database ties kids bring from the home, usually Give Parents Choices Editor for The Washington Post. by using statistical regression tech- On-line editions provide readers with niques. Giving the school system credit powerful tools. Let them use the data for advantages kids bring to school on Web sites by giving them the option from home isn’t telling your audience of examining the schools in any way much about the quality of the school. they’d choose—by diversity, combined Neither is blaming the school for prob- test scores, math scores or student- teacher ratios. This option doesn’t just

36 Nieman Reports / Spring 1999 Journalist’s Trade The Price of Hope: Investigating Disparities Among Rich and Poor Schools

By Ted Mellnik and Debbie Cenziper

or years, parents and educators in poverty-ridden pockets of the FSouth sensed the public schools were shortchanging their children. And they were right. Their schools face nu- merous challenges: Administrators and teachers must educate some of the region’s most disadvantaged students, children whose home and community environments often don’t have the abil- ity to support them in pursuit of a rigorous education. These deficits are accentuated by the inability of poor districts to raise local tax dollars needed to provide the kind of resource-rich schools found in wealthier districts. In 1998 The Charlotte Observer set out to document the educational dis- parities among rich and poor school Photo by Diedra Laird, The Charlotte Observer. districts in North and South Carolina. We did this by illuminating the lives of children and families as they confronted nomic gap in public investment im- school system without such basics as the circumstances of their local public pacts student achievement. We devel- advanced placement classes. Our story schools, but we also brought to this oped databases and spreadsheets so also included comparisons of the fi- investigation a fresh analysis of data we could get a better handle on the nancial gulfs between each state’s rich- about how students and schools were dynamics of our region. We wanted to est and poorest school systems. The performing. This data included com- portray the stark contrasts between basic measure was wealth per student, parisons of test scores, rates of teacher wealthy and poverty-plagued systems an estimate of the local tax money a turnover, and a host of measures that and help readers see more starkly than community could afford to spend if it researchers conclude are key to they had before the saddening failures levied a state average tax rate. This children’s academic success. Our analy- that were the unfortunate hallmark of yardstick—basically a measure of a sis gave us a way to present to readers our poorer public schools. The result community’s ability to support the stark reality of what happens when was a series called “The Price of Hope,” schools—was created by the North poor children don’t have access to a published August 16-20 in The Char- Carolina Public School Forum, which quality, competitive public education. lotte Observer.”1 has long studied school finance. The We spent eight months tracking Our series began with a teenager South Carolina Department of Educa- down local, state and national reports named Quanda Edwards, who wants tion provided its tax data, which we that would help us show how the eco- to go to Harvard but is growing up in a used to create a measure similar to

1An on-line version of the series in The Charlotte Observer is at: http://www.charlotte.com/schools/carolinas/

Nieman Reports / Spring 1999 37 Journalist’s Trade

what we were using in our state. that students in the 15 poorest districts tems and about terms like “educational According to this measure, in each of the Carolinas post an aver- equity,” so this gave readers a chance Mecklenburg, The Observer’s home age combined SAT score that is 100 to see the relationships among these county and one of North Carolina’s points lower than their peers in the factors. wealthiest school systems, could af- wealthiest systems. Teachers in the Poor districts in each of the Caroli- ford to spend an estimated $5,529 per poorer schools are less likely to hold nas had filed lawsuits asking for new student. In contrast, the state’s poor- higher-level degrees, and students are ways to be created to raise more money. est county, Hoke, could afford to spend less likely to take gifted or advanced These cases are similar to many that only $708. A similar gap appears when placement classes or attend college. have been heard by courts in other one looks at the actual dollars spent on And those who do get to college are states. In North Carolina, the state Su- education. In Mecklenburg, spending more likely to need remedial help. preme Court has ruled all students per student in local taxes was esti- Students from poorer counties are have a right to a sound, basic educa- mated at $2,271, compared with $563 also less likely to perform at grade level tion. At the time our series ran, lawyers in Hoke. With this information, we in reading and math, a situation that were scrambling to determine just what could also see that the ratio of spend- our data were able to convincingly de- it would take to provide a “sound, ing to wealth is about twice as high for scribe. In each of the Carolinas, the 15 basic education” to all students. The Hoke (0.8) as for Mecklenburg (0.4). poorest school systems post test scores South Carolina case is still pending. This suggests that Hoke, although it is that repeatedly pull both states down The Observer wanted to help read- much poorer, is expending significantly on national education measures, such ers better understand what those law- more taxation effort for its schools, as the SAT. suits were about. Beyond helping them even though the amount generated is On our Web site, we offered demo- to corral the facts, we wanted to intro- meager. graphic and educational profiles of duce them to students, teachers and Given these disparities, it was per- every North Carolina county and South parents whose lives and futures were haps not surprising as much as it was Carolina school system so our readers directly impacted by the poorer schools’ disheartening to learn how students could explore these patterns in detail. inability to afford what most would were faring in poor schools. Among Many people had heard something consider to be the basics of education other things, our investigation found about the plight of poor school sys- at the end of the 20th Century—ad- vanced placement classes, well- equipped computer labs, teachers trained in how to use these new educa- tion tools, and programs for the gifted. To tell these stories, I (reporter Cenziper) and photographer Gayle Shomer traveled the back roads of North Carolina to spend time in rural school systems where our data told us that students were producing consis- tently low test scores as their towns struggled with issues of chronic low funding. We wanted to rely not only on our statistical analysis, but on real people and their stories. Our first stop was the city of Weldon, an old railroad town in a poor north- eastern region of the state. There, in a middle school made up almost entirely of mobile classrooms, we met Quanda, an eighth grader who wants to become a lawyer, attend Harvard and build her own house. She’s a high achiever in a school where, our data let us know, teachers don’t often return after sum- mer vacation. As is true in so many At her home in rural Lee County, Diane Davis helps her sons with their homework. other poor school systems, teacher Photo by Diedra Laird, The Charlotte Observer. turnover is severe, and when teachers come and go from a school, student performance tends to suffer.

38 Nieman Reports / Spring 1999 Journalist’s Trade

When Quanda gets to high school, a year; and $2,700 more a year in ing, less than half of the students who she will not be able to take advanced Mecklenburg. In a typical year, Harnett attend that school are reading at grade placement classes because the system schools will have to fill 130 of 670 level. Only 38 percent of the fourth doesn’t have the money to offer them. teacher jobs. Harnett school leaders graders passed the state writing test. “I Weldon City High has no school news- hope Harding will stick around but know beyond a shadow of a doubt that paper, no yearbook, no electives such they can’t provide financial incentives. principals and teachers here are doing as psychology or chorus or photogra- Harding loves teaching, but she be- everything possible with the resources phy. There are no school plays because comes exasperated when she thinks they have,” Smith says. “But with more there is no drama class or teacher. No about teachers elsewhere who earn money and more resources, everything one in the last graduating class had higher pay for jobs that might be much could be a whole lot better.” gone on to an Ivy League school, and less challenging than hers. “You do the In South Carolina, Observer reporter it’s been a rarity for anyone to do so. exact same things they do. I have the Jonathan Goldstein and photographer Still, Quanda is not worried: “I am same degree. I’ve been to school for Diedra Laird traveled to Lee County very confident in myself, and I have my four years. I’m a hard-working person. and met Diane Davis. Her four children friends and my family there for me I show up every day. It doesn’t make hunt for books in a half-empty library whenever I need them.… As long as I any sense just because we’re a few at West Lee Elementary School. They have that support, and, you know, I miles away, we make less money,” she wait in long lines to use a computer. believe in myself, to me, right now, I’m told our reporters. They tumble through physical educa- sitting on top of the world.” Can her The Observer’s next stop: Anson tion lessons in a musty trailer behind confidence and support get her over County, just east of Charlotte, and home the school. Although rich-poor differ- the hurdles created by all that her school to Debbie Smith. Debbie, who never ences exist in every state, critics say the system lacks? got to finish college, dreams that her situation is consistently worse in South From Weldon, The Observer staffers four children will. She started putting Carolina, which spends less state money moved south to Harnett County, where money into college funds years ago. per pupil than neighboring states. they spent time with rookie teacher But Debbie is worried Anson County Many readers responded to our se- Kathy Harding. In poor school systems, schools won’t prepare her kids for the ries, offering advice and donations for successful teachers like Harding often demands of higher education. Three of poor schools. One of the state’s most move on for higher-paying teaching her children attend Morven Elemen- vocal education advocacy groups is jobs in wealthier counties. In Wake tary, where the academic challenges using the findings in our series to try to County, for example, our data showed are among the most formidable in the mobilize members of the public to bring that Harding would make $2,000 more state. Though test scores are improv- about change. An Observer poll taken just before the series ran showed 71 percent of Carolinians are willing to shift tax money from wealthy to poor systems. Several measures were re- cently put into motion among legisla- tors to bolster poor schools, including one that boosted from about $50 mil- lion to $60 million the supplemental fund that is used to aid low-income and poor school systems. “The Price of Hope” took our read- ers on a well-documented journey into the educational plight of children and families whose lives aren’t often cov- ered in our newspaper. By compiling and analyzing data, then finding the human stories to illuminate the vari- ous tales our numbers told, we were able to produce a unique and valuable series about a vitally important issue of public policy and debate. ■

Database Editor Ted Mellnik leads The Charlotte Observer’s computer- Quanda Edwards, 13, left, listens with classmates to school test scores being announced assisted reporting program. Debbie at Weldon Middle School. Photo by Gayle Shomer, The Charlotte Observer. Cenziper is the paper’s education reporter who also reported on schools and social issues for The (FortNieman Lauderdale) Reports Sun-Sentinel. / Spring 1999 39 Their most recent project is “Decid- Journalist’s Trade The Learning Gap: Highlighting Teachers’ Competency

By Linda J. Johnson

ducation writers often try to mea- make sound policy sure the success of their local decisions. Eschools by analyzing such things as test scores, class sizes and poverty These circumstances rates. But many reporters overlook one prompted us to want to of the most influential factors in look more closely at the children’s school success: the quality issues involved with of teachers. teacher competency and A primary reason why education quality in our state. This journalists tend to omit this measure meant also looking at the from their reporting is the difficulties ways in which teachers they confront in finding reliable data are trained and whether about teacher qualifications. their roles as teachers But as we at The Lexington (Ky.) are adequately matched Herald-Leader found, it can be done. with their preparation. The Lexington Herald-Leader pub- In reporting this se- lished a four-part series last November ries, “The Learning Gap: that demonstrated how our state’s na- High Expectations for tionally acclaimed Kentucky Education Students, Low Standards Reform Act requires schools to set high for Teachers,” education expectation for students, but the same reporters Holly E. Stepp, can’t be said for teachers. Linda B. Blackford and I In 1989, the state Supreme Court documented that ruled the state’s public school funding Kentucky’s teachers are mechanism unconstitutional. It or- able to receive a passing dered the General Assembly to start grade on their certifica- from scratch in redesigning more equi- tion exams despite pro- table funding. The result was the pas- ducing some of the low- sage of the 1990 reform law, which has est scores among similar as its premise the belief that all stu- test-takers throughout dents can learn at high levels. While the the South. Photo by Michelle Patterson, The Lexington Herald- law was far from perfect, it did succeed One invaluable re- Leader. in focusing Kentucky’s attention on source we used for de- school equity and student achievement. veloping our reporting on this series records and their scores on state-man- But the law has failed to address was an electronic database of informa- dated certification exams. And some teacher quality. There are two major tion about teachers that helped us to data that we would like to have had, reasons: gauge their quality. We supplemented such as tests taken by teachers before this analysis of data with interviews the state began using PRAXIS and solid • Kentucky’s teachers union has used with policymakers, school administra- demographic data such as race and its political clout to successfully hold tors and teachers. gender, simply didn’t exist in an elec- off attempts to toughen teaching Arranging the interviews was easy; tronic form that could be trusted. standards. getting access to the necessary data The newspaper argued in a series of • Lawmakers and bureaucrats have not was not. State education officials balked letters and telephone calls with the had access to reliable data about the at turning over what they considered attorney for the Kentucky Department teacher workforce from which to confidential information, including of Education’s Professional Standards details about teachers’ academic Board that the information, as a whole,

40 Nieman Reports / Spring 1999 Journalist’s Trade

Because there is so little electronic data about teachers hired before 1994, it became impossible for us to draw any solid conclusions about their quali- fications as teachers. And this was illu- minating because it meant state offi- cials couldn’t do that kind of analysis, either. This is a significant problem since more than half of our state’s teachers have been in the classroom for at least 15 years. This means they never took the PRAXIS tests, which the state began using during the 1990’s, yet they still hold their lifetime certifi- cation. These teachers will remain cer- tified despite never having taken any kind of test or doing anything more than attend to the annual required professional development, which we found to be mediocre in many places. Now, having said that, all Kentucky teachers must get master’s degrees, but they have 10 years in which to do Photo by Michelle Patterson, The Lexington Herald-Leader. that. Many experts with whom we spoke for this story questioned the value of should not be regarded as confiden- went to work after becoming certified. earning a degree that can be stretched tial. Because Kentucky’s school reform The state’s data expert also changed over that length of time. Essentially, law evaluates schools largely based on the identifier for each person in the what our search for information let us students’ test scores, why shouldn’t separate tables to make it impossible know is that the older age of many of teachers be judged by their scores on for us to match the tables and identify Kentucky’s teachers is a potential bar- teacher certification tests? Kentucky individuals. rier if one is trying to find ways to gauge children are tested annually on what For the most part, this arrangement their qualifications. the state has decided they should know. worked. Only in some extreme ex- Do these circumstances mean that Each year, as the reform law spells out, amples—such as one teacher who took many of Kentucky’s teachers aren’t the bar for schools is raised slightly the three required certification tests a qualified for their jobs? higher. If a school declines beyond a total of 22 times—was it easy to learn The answer is that no one really certain point, it faces sanctions. where that person ended up working. knows, because nobody had ever tried But for Kentucky’s teachers, the stan- (That person never was able to pass all before to compile the data and analyze dards haven’t changed. three tests and is a teacher working it. Looking at the individual test scores Getting the information we thought with “emergency certification” in a by using Visual FoxPro, a computer we needed to do our own analysis of county in the south central part of the program that lets us query information teacher preparedness and performance state, not far from where he or she from a database, we were able to pro- required two months of negotiation graduated from college.) vide a glimpse at some of the informa- with the Standards Board’s attorney. We asked for data that went back 10 tion that is useful when measuring In the end, state officials released the years. But we soon discovered that the teachers’ competency: scores on the three core PRAXIS certi- state has very little electronic data about fication tests required in Kentucky and teachers prior to 1994. For us to have • We could let readers know how many more than two dozen specialty tests received hard copies of these records, teachers passed certification tests used for individual teachers. They also after the state blacked out the names the first time by combining the scores released to us data about the college and other identifiable information, we had with other published data each teacher attended, deleting names would not have been worth the cost or on passing scores. or demographic information that might time it would have taken us to put it • We could let readers know how many have allowed us to identify any indi- into the electronic form we needed to teachers failed the first time and in vidual. In a second database, the state do our analysis. But we never faced which colleges they were trained. released the PRAXIS test scores and that hurdle since the state couldn’t (Such comparisons had not been told us the school district—but not the guarantee that the older data we wanted made public before our series ap- specific school—where each teacher existed in any form. peared.)

Nieman Reports / Spring 1999 41 Journalist’s Trade

We found that in Kentucky, to no one’s surprise, people tend to go to college near where they were raised, and then they often return to their hometowns to teach. This means that students who came out of weak school systems tend to return to them. And this sets into motion a destructive cycle that makes academic excellence harder to achieve in these areas of the state. By also analyzing the test scores, using a technique developed by an economics professor at Carnegie Mellon University, we learned how little is actually necessary to pass Kentucky’s teacher certification test. In fact, teachers were being allowed to pass the three basic tests and 18 spe- cialty exams we reviewed by answer- ing anywhere from 35 percent to half of the questions correctly. The state agency that oversees teacher training told our reporters that it intends to raise the bar for passing teacher certification tests and expects Photo by Michelle Patterson, The Lexington Herald-Leader. to release specifics of its plan early this year. Officials say they will require new Kentucky’s Education Commissioner when the articles ran and, for the first Kentucky teachers taking the PRAXIS released the outline of a plan to im- time, people were able to make con- tests to score at least as high as those prove education. Teacher training and nections where none had been visible elsewhere in the South, a region of the quality were focal points of many of his before. ■ country in which these test scores, in initiatives. Since these had not been general, are lower than in other areas. top agenda items before, the educa- Linda J. Johnson is education writer So the state is faced with several tion establishment was caught by sur- for The Lexington Herald-Leader. dilemmas. Is it enough to want its teach- prise. Earlier this year she became the ers simply to score as well as they do And then in the middle of January, paper’s Computer-Assisted Reporting elsewhere in the South? Or should the the newspaper learned the Governor Coordinator. She began her involve- bar be set higher for them, as it is for its was planning to create an 18-member ment with computer-assisted report- students? This remains a delicate bal- task force to examine teacher training ing when she was health/environ- ancing act for state officials, as our issues. One state lawmaker said teacher ment reporter for The Vindicator, a reporters discovered: raise the bar too training has been a “hot topic” for paper in Youngstown, Ohio. high, too quickly, and not enough teach- some time, but that the paper’s series ers will pass. That leaves students with- heightened awareness of the low stan- out teachers. dards set for teachers even more. What we hope our series helped That, to some degree, was our mis- readers and policymakers understand sion in setting out to do this series. We is why quality matters in terms of how wanted to take an aspect of education teachers do their jobs and how being to which enough attention had not lax in terms of letting teachers pass been paid, shine a light on what could tests at lower thresholds might jeopar- be learned by carefully analyzing data, dize children’s learning. Certainly our and provide some vivid examples— series did succeed in getting the state’s through our reporting—that would bureaucrats and policymakers to talk exemplify the harm that can occur if seriously about the need for better the problem is left untreated. It took a teacher training and higher qualifica- lot for us to get the numbers we needed tions. The day after our series began out of the state bureaucracy, but our appearing in the newspaper, efforts to do so paid off handsomely

42 Nieman Reports / Spring 1999 Journalist’s Trade A Dual-Track Approach to Tackling The Topic of Reading: Reporting the Story and Pitching in to Fix the Problem

By David Lauter

n May 1998, The Los Angeles Times published an exhaustive look at the Iproblem of California’s schools— three special sections, 20 pages in all, entitled “Public Education: California’s Perilous Slide.” The project docu- mented the disastrous effects of two decades of neglect—the worst overall ratio of teachers to students in the nation, 31,000 classrooms statewide presided over by men and women who lack a teaching certificate, and test scores in math and reading that are among the lowest in the nation. The project, which had been six months in the making, engaged the efforts of more than 20 reporters and photographers. It prompted an enor- mous reaction among readers and helped galvanize the attention of state leaders. The state’s current efforts at education reform are heavily aimed at the two issues—teacher training and system-wide accountability—that were the focus of the project’s final install- ment. Once the exhaustion of getting the Photo by Robert Durell, The Los Angeles Times. project into print wore off, discussions within the paper turned to the ques- tion, “now what?” southern California read far below We had devoted huge resources to end of the third grade—the year that grade level, asked if the same effort calling attention to the problems of reading experts have identified as the could be replicated here. education, and clearly our readers cared make or break point for academic suc- His proposal faced some immediate about the issue. We certainly did not cess. problems. The most important involved want to abandon the field, but neither To achieve that goal, The Sun had scale. The Sun’s project dealt largely could we simply do more of the same highlighted lagging reading scores in with one school district, Baltimore. By without being repetitious. Baltimore, focused on the lack of phon- contrast, The Times’s core circulation Times publisher Mark Willes had ics instruction in the schools, and en- area covers major portions of five coun- been greatly impressed by a project couraged employees of the paper and ties. The roughly 800 elementary launched the previous year at The Bal- members of the community to tutor schools in our region are governed by timore Sun, which is also a Times Mir- students in schools with particularly scores of independent school districts. ror paper. The Sun’s Reading by Nine bad scores. The Los Angeles Unified School Dis- project set a simple, albeit ambitious, Willes, greatly concerned about the trict is by far the biggest—the second- goal: engage the community to get evidence reinforced in our series that largest in the country. But our circula- every child to read at grade level by the hundreds of thousands of children in

Nieman Reports / Spring 1999 43 Journalist’s Trade

tion area also includes such sizable September on into November, that porter Melissa Healy examined pre- cities as Long Beach, Santa Ana, Ventura would examine different facets of our school reading programs, and educa- and Riverside as well as suburban dis- reading problem. In the meantime, our tion specialist Richard Colvin teamed tricts and tiny rural outposts with only colleagues on the corporate side of up with one of our senior Washington one school. The Times would continue to lay the reporters, Richard Cooper, to look at Moreover, the policy issue that The groundwork for the work the newspa- school reform efforts nationwide. An- Sun focused on—whole language ver- per would be doing in the community. other education writer, Duke Helfand, sus phonics—had already been re- That two-track approach proved to looked at companies that are hoping to solved in California, at least on the have several advantages. Reporters and make money off the state’s move back policy level. State officials had adopted some editors were concerned, when into phonics while Elizabeth Mehren, a a new phonics-based curriculum ear- the effort was first announced, that the national correspondent based in Bos- lier in the decade. In California, other compromises and political coalitions ton, examined the rising phenomenon issues such as teacher training, account- that might be necessary for a successful of merchandise being sold as tie-ins to ability and bilingualism were at the public campaign could affect our jour- children’s books. forefront of public concern. nalism. If, for example, The Times on a The article that drew the most reader As people in The Times’s commu- corporate level were to back a particu- response so far came from Robert Lee nity affairs office began to examine the lar reading method as part of the Read- Hotz, one of our science writers, who size of the effort that would be needed ing by Nine campaign, would that af- produced a fascinating look at new to launch a Reading by Nine program fect the sorts of stories we wrote? By research into the neurobiology of read- in so vast a region, it became clear that putting our news coverage on a faster ing and the insights that the research the organizational task, alone, would track than the overall corporate cam- has begun to supply for teachers. take far more time than anyone had paign, we allayed those concerns. The stories not only drew attention initially realized. On the newsroom A second nagging fear remained: to the issue of reading, they also illumi- side of the paper, however, Times Edi- Would we be able to find enough news- nated new facets of the broader na- tor Michael Parks had concluded we worthy stories to sustain a continuing tional debate over improving our should not wait. series? That fear was put to rest soon schools. And as time went on, we dis- And so, with the beginning of the after the project was launched. As word covered that far from running out of new school year in September, The spread that the Reading series was a stories, exploration of reading was turn- Times launched a second major educa- major priority for the fall, reporters ing up more ideas as we went along. tion project for 1998—a series of page- from all parts of The Times began to In mid-fall, a page-one letter to read- one stories, one each Sunday from suggest ideas: Washington Bureau re- ers from Willes and Parks announced that The Times was committed to a five-year effort to help our communi- ties teach all children to read by age nine. The paper’s work is two-fold: On the newsroom side, we are committed to explaining, analyzing and clarifying issues, monitoring success or failure of statewide and community efforts, and making sure that public officials know their work is being watched. On the business side, a task force of executives from all departments has been deeply involved in planning a region-wide Reading by Nine campaign. How ex- actly these two initiatives will work in tandem is not yet clear since the corpo- rate effort is not yet fully engaged. As our newsroom efforts unfolded, readers across Southern California be- gan to take notice. In addition to let- ters and E-mail, we started to find that at community forums and speeches to outside groups—regardless of the os- Photo by Luis Sinco, The Los Angeles Times. tensible topic—someone in the audi- ence almost always brought up Read- ing by Nine. To extend the effort further,

44 Nieman Reports / Spring 1999 Journalist’s Trade

The Times took three additional steps school children to read. A prominent the paper plans to host a regional read- during the fall. feature of the page is a serialized short ing conference to build on this work. First, we expanded our full-time staff children’s story that runs each week. The campaign has clearly made a of nine education writers by adding a As those editorial efforts have rolled mark on the public agenda. Newly new position solely devoted to cover- out, the business side of the paper has elected Governor Gray Davis, for ex- age of reading-related issues. continued its efforts to plan the Read- ample, has declared Reading by Nine Second, we added to our Sunday ing by Nine campaign. one of his top official priorities and has Metro section a full page devoted to Some elements of that plan already proposed legislation to a special ses- reading aimed at parents, teachers and are in place. Willes and other senior sion of the Legislature to enhance the state’s teaching of read- ing. By now, Reading by Nine has become institu- tionalized in the news- room. Editors and report- ers, knowing that stories about reading are a pri- ority for the paper, keep an eye out for ideas and are quick to offer sugges- tions. Their ideas will be needed. While the paper’s initial announce- ment declared a five-year commitment, further in- volvement has proven once again that school reform is not a sport for the short-winded. The effort to ensure that our schools are properly teaching every child to read will be a priority at The Times for at least a Photo by Wally Skalij, The Los Angeles Times. decade. ■

David Lauter is the other adults who care for children. Times executives have made Reading Specialist Editor of The Los Angeles Each week it includes a main story that by Nine the focus of speeches to scores Times, responsible for the paper’s looks at some aspect of teaching read- of community organizations, business coverage of education, science, ing—a school, a curricular issue, new groups and the like, urging them to medicine, religion, law and the research, etc. In addition, the page lend their help to book drives, tutoring environment. He has previously includes several features: a column of programs and other efforts aimed at served as National Political Editor advice from reading experts for par- helping children learn to read. The and was White House correspondent ents, a list of children’s book events Reading by Nine task force has met from 1988-90 and 1992-94. localized for each part of our circula- with community organizations from tion area, a list of recommended across the region to discuss strategies children’s books prepared by local li- for improving the schools. The task brarians, and a short essay by a promi- force has also hosted several meetings nent person about what first turned of education officials from around the him or her on to reading. region, providing a forum in which Finally, as part of a previously they meet with literacy experts from planned redesign of our lifestyle sec- the federal and state governments, tion, Southern California Living, The academia and elsewhere. Newsroom Times added a page aimed at chil- personnel do not take direct part in dren—The Kids’ Reading Room—that those sessions, but stay informed about is designed to encourage elementary the task force’s efforts. This summer,

Nieman Reports / Spring 1999 45 Journalist’s Trade By Being There, a Reporter Captures a Rare View of Middle School

By Jolayne Houtz

en young teens draped them- that ensured I could go literally any- it matters for good reporting, too. There selves over chairs, forming a where in the school unescorted, listen- is no substitute for spending the time it Tsloppy circle in the center of an ing in on classes, lunchroom conversa- takes to earn the trust and absorb the empty middle-school classroom. I sat tions, teacher-lounge gossip, rhythms of her subjects’ lives. Of all the on the edge of the circle, an outsider counseling sessions and more. I at- beats I’ve covered, including politics, looking in on an extraordinary pre- tended school dances, staff meetings, health care and the courts, this is most adolescent confessional. parent orientations, special artistic true in education reporting. “OK, clean time. How long since performances and graduation ceremo- Reporting education stories from a you used? You know the drill,” said the nies. I’ve never had such wide-open distance makes it difficult to cut through drug and alcohol counselor as he kicked access to a school and its students, and the jargon educators tend to use. And things off unceremoniously. I know it grew out of the fact that, over it is all but impossible to put into per- One by one, each of the students time, I became just so much furniture, spective the fads, from new instruc- gave an accounting of his or her drug blending into the background of the tional and testing methods to school- and alcohol use during the previous school. The same was true for Times reform models, which ebb and flow week. Funny, irreverent and vulgar, photographer Steve Ringman, who through schools, and the subjective their hurt filled the room. worked with me on the project. interpretation of statistics that can be The girl with the longest clean time “I felt like an alien from outer space used to buttress those fads. Test scores, had two weeks and a day behind her. when I first landed there,” he recalled. disciplinary rates and other statistics The girl next to her was still nursing a With cam- hangover from the night before. Their eras hang- “There is no substitute for a reporter ages ranged from 11- to 14-years-old. ing around spending the time it takes to earn the Being there, watching the fits and his neck, trust and absorb the rhythms of her starts of pre-teens trying to navigate Ringman their way over the chasm between child- became a subjects’ lives.” hood and adulthood, was at the heart curiosity, an of a three-day series I wrote last June instant target for questions and a mag- are often less straightforward than they for The Seattle Times about “The Kids net for the class clowns. It was impos- appear. Being there is the only way to in the Middle.” sible to get the natural, spontaneous know for certain that the story that This was purely a shoe-leather story pictures he believed would best tell the appears to be captured in the numbers that explored the everyday lives of stu- story of these mysterious years. reflects what’s really going on inside dents, teachers and the principal at a But after about three months, “I the school. Seattle middle school. This school be- became sort of a boring figure to them,” Firsthand knowledge helps cut came a sort of petri dish in which to Ringman said. Familiarity bred com- through the haze of fuzzy ideas and explore what works and what doesn’t fort, if not contempt. By the end of the well-intentioned experiments that just in reaching middle-grade students. The year, students and teachers weren’t don’t work in the bright light of a series relied on my fly-on-the-wall pres- even looking up when Ringman’s shut- classroom filled with real kids. In com- ence in the school. I was there at least ter clicked. The result was a set of puter-assisted reporting projects, be- once a week for most of the school pictures capturing quintessential ing there is at least as critical. But with year. And I filled dozens of notebooks middle-school moments—hallway resources stretched at many newspa- with details that could draw readers roughhousing, a young couple slow pers, I worry that reporters—once into a story about the fragile, critical, dancing, the music teacher at the end armed with data—won’t have the luxury sometimes funny middle years, and of a long day, a line of girls primping I had to linger so long within schools. the unique issues that challenge edu- between classes in the bathroom. Test scores, dropout rates, free and cators in trying to reach these students. Being there, in the midst of the reduced-price lunch statistics measure Being with them consistently was action, is essential for a photographer. a part of the education picture, but the only way to earn the level of trust This story proved once again to me that numbers don’t convey much about the

46 Nieman Reports / Spring 1999 Journalist’s Trade art and craft of teaching or tell us much touch it. This happened to Elizabeth not impossible, even for parents who about the motivations and challenges Kim this spring during a special 10- have the time to visit their children’s of the students. The best education week poetry workshop in Julie Lehnis’s school, to get an accurate picture of reporting projects rely on spreadsheets sixth-grade classroom. The shy 12-year- what goes on. More than 75 people— and crunched numbers only to frame a old was terrified to learn she would most of whom were parents—called, story, not to tell it. In these stories, the have to stand up in front of her class- wrote or E-mailed in response to the role of the computer may be virtually mates, read her own poems aloud, and series. This was among the greatest invisible to the reader but instrumen- be judged on her eye contact and pos- number of responses I’ve ever received tal in guiding the reporter. ture as well as her words. But every on any story I’ve written. Many parents So much of what makes a school week she stood in the circle of her said they were grateful to know their successful—or not—is in the relation- classmates, Elizabeth found it got easier families weren’t alone in trying to fig- ships among teachers and students, in until she was looking other students in ure out how to weather the tough the atmosphere of the classroom, in the eye without fear the school culture that dictates how and reading her po- “The best education projects rely seriously academics are taken. Does etry in a strong, the teacher have control of the rowdy clear voice. on spreadsheets and crunched students in her classroom? Is it clear Last month, numbers only to frame a story, not what she wants students to learn? Do Elizabeth did some- to tell it.” students get it? Will they remember thing she never how to use what they’ve been taught? imagined she Those elements are nebulous and hard could. She was one of a dozen middle- transformation that their pre-teens to capture by numbers alone. As I set school students who volunteered to were experiencing. out to report my story, I used statistics read poetry in front of a microphone at I know that the impersonal presen- to help me select the school I featured. a crowded West Seattle Starbucks cof- tation of numbers or a briefly reported But when the story was published, its fee shop. Wearing white carnations and glimpse at this school or a selected telling relied almost exclusively on what carrying themselves with new confi- classroom would never have connected I had observed. dence, Elizabeth and the others spoke readers to the issues and challenges My shoe-leather approach offered poignant words they’d written about that educators confront as this year- parents a rare and valued glimpse into hope, peace and social justice. Shoul- long assignment enabled me to do. their children’s world. Being on hand ders squared, they looked the audi- This series served as a valuable re- to see and hear for myself what hap- ence in the eyes, sprinkling in just the minder that while technology can help pened each day at this school paid off right dramatic pauses and hand ges- us, it can never be a substitute for using with rich details and evocative mo- tures, though if you looked closely, our eyes, our ears and our minds to ments that let parents eavesdrop on you could see their hands shaking. portray the human experience. ■ events in their children’s lives that they I knew what a metamorphosis this would not otherwise have been a part was for Elizabeth and her classmates Jolayne Houtz has been a reporter at of. As readers they were able to peek in because I’d been watching them since The Seattle Times for nine years. For on the choir class where the teacher they arrived new to the school, feeling the past five years she’s reported on struggled to keep control of an unruly awkward and timid and confronting education, writing about the Seattle group of altos. the challenges that go along with height- schools and statewide education “You have too many rules!” a girl ened expectations of these middle- issues and trends. complained, pulling out a tape recorder school years. I was transfixed that night and hitting the play button. at Starbucks six months later, watching “Please put that away. That’s a toy,” these newly confident young people the teacher said evenly. on stage. That night, I could see the “No, it’s a tape recorder to keep outlines of the adults they would be- people like you from harassing me. come, rather than the children they God, there’s like 75 rules. STUPID had been. RULES!” she yelled. She was standing I’m glad I was there during all those under a sign listing class rules, one of months so that I could see for myself which said “I will show respect and the stages of this remarkable passage consideration for others.” and, most of all, I was grateful I could And readers experience that sweet, share it with readers. fleeting moment when a year’s worth What we discovered is how hungry of work pays off, when teacher and parents are to find out what happens in student connect, and the light of knowl- the classroom once they turn their chil- edge burns so brightly you can almost dren over to the school. It is difficult, if

Nieman Reports / Spring 1999 47 International Journalism

From Hong Kong— A report on the press after China’s return

From the United States— Reports on technological tools to help journalists track international stories from their office computers

Peter Stein, Managing Editor of The Asian Wall Street Journal, opens our section with a close-up view of how the press handles controversial stories—such as recent trials of dissidents in China—in the wake of Hong Kong’s 1997 transfer to Chinese sovereignty. His report reveals the emergence of “quiet self-censorship,” evident in the degree to which newspapers are willing to probe and analyze sensitive political topics.

The rest of the section examines from a variety of perspectives the role that technology is able to play in assisting reporters with the coverage of stories that involve reporting across national borders. Using sophisticated software programs to guide computer-assisted reporting, large databases of information can be untangled by journalists who want to investigate the financial activities of multinational companies or set out to analyze politicians’ performances or report on charges of price gouging in telephone rates.

Brant Houston, the Executive Director of Investigative Reporters and Editors, Inc. and the National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting, writes the first of these articles. He provides examples from Denmark and South America in which journalists put their newly acquired skills to work in locating and analyzing data and publishing important news stories based on their findings.

Maud S. Beelman, Director of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, follows with a modern-day tale about the “ties that bind journalists,” links that are now located in cyberspace.

Christopher Simpson, Director of the Project on Satellite Imagery and the News Media at American University, describes what reporters can learn by examining some of the millions of non-classified, high resolution images of earth that are available on line, thanks to satellite technology. ■

48 Nieman Reports / Spring 1999 International Journalism Hong Kong’s Press: While Debate Rages About Media Ethics, Self-Censorship Quietly Thrives

By Peter Stein

ecently, academics and leading “Certainly, of all those terrible sce- Ming Pao—ran the story either on page journalists from Hong Kong gath- narios, none of them materialized,” one or page two. R ered at a conference in Hong says Kin-ming Liu, Chairman of the Coverage of other dissident stories Kong to reflect on the woeful state of Hong Kong Journalists’ Association has also been extensive. When Wang this city’s news media. Their genuflec- (HKJA). “For that we have to give credit Dan, a prominent June 4, 1989 democ- tion focused on declining ethical stan- to China.” racy activist, was released from prison dards. Hong Kong’s journalists them- This is all the more remarkable con- and exiled to the United States last selves admit that the media here—like sidering that Beijing is waging a severe April, Hong Kong’s top newspapers all their counterparts in America—are political crackdown on the mainland. splashed it across their front pages. more prone than ever to promote sala- In December, three dissidents hoping Oriental Daily boasted about getting cious stories over “hard” news, twist or to organize Communist China’s first an exclusive interview with Wang after outright fabricate their facts, and in- real opposition party were jailed for up his arrival in America. Apple Daily re- vade the privacy of the people they to 13 years; in January, authorities also printed some of Wang’s writings. Main- cover. Amazingly the conference, spon- imprisoned an entrepreneur accused land Chinese newspapers mostly sored by the Freedom Forum, almost of selling Internet E-mail addresses to steered clear of this subject altogether, entirely ignored the question of how an overseas political group. highlighting their reluctance to tread free Hong Kong’s press remains under Yet Beijing has avoided making overt on politically sensitive ground on which Chinese rule. moves to curb the Hong Kong press. the Hong Kong press apparently feels The omission may have resulted The result is that in certain respects, at ease. from the conclusion—not entirely out- Hong Kong journalists appear to enjoy Despite this, self-censorship clearly rageous, at first glance—that Hong a lot of freedom. That’s particularly thrives. In fact, its existence has been a Kong’s press freedom is self-evident, obvious in the relish with which many fact of life for Hong Kong’s press since almost a non-event. Unfortunately, newspapers have criticized the govern- years before the handover. Under Brit- that’s not true. Imposed censorship ment of Chief Executive Tung Chee ish rule, reporters from newspapers hasn’t shut up Hong Kong’s boisterous Hwa. Tung and his administration are that criticized China too frequently press, but self-censorship has softened satirized and lambasted frequently for weren’t invited to important press gath- its tone and restricted the depth and their handling of crises such as the erings organized by China’s political direction of its coverage. crash in Hong Kong’s stock and prop- authorities in Hong Kong. Those same That’s not to say reality hasn’t turned erty prices, a near epidemic of bird flu newspapers also rarely, if ever, received out better than expected prior to Hong last year, and the disastrous July open- lucrative advertising revenues from Kong’s historic July 1, 1997 transfer ing of Hong Kong’s new airport. China-backed companies that have from British to Chinese sovereignty. Hong Kong newspapers appear free become increasingly important in the Hong Kong’s most outspoken newspa- likewise to carry news on political de- Hong Kong business community. pers and magazines—including those velopments in China. Take the Decem- Today, self-censorship remains in run by unapologetic anti-Communist ber trials of Chinese dissidents. When the degree to which Hong Kong’s me- Jimmy Lai—continue to publish. Re- a Chinese court sentenced Xu Wenli to dia is willing to probe and analyze, ports about political dissidents in 13 years in jail for the crime of “subver- rather than simply relate. The news China, articles about the Dalai Lama, sion,” the English-language South reports on China “are all factual and and news from Beijing’s archenemy, China Morning Post put the story on its safe,” says Claudia Mo, a television an- Taiwan, are all widely available. No front page, just like The New York chor, radio host and columnist. “What reporters or editors in Hong Kong have Times and The Washington Post. Hong puts me off is there’s very little com- been sent to prison for reporting on Kong’s top Chinese-language papers— mentary.” politically sensitive issues. Oriental Daily News, Apple Daily and

Nieman Reports / Spring 1999 49 International Journalism

Editorializing, in particular, has be- Raymond Wong, Assistant General come extremely sensitive business. To Manager at Hong Kong’s largest televi- their credit, some newspapers do in- sion station, Television Broadcasting deed publish critical opinion pieces Ltd., “has more potential to sabotage about Beijing’s policies. The day after than to serve the public interest.” the sentencing of Xu and his colleagues, A few bad scandals have especially Ming Pao’s editorial warned that “the tarnished the industry. Among the heavy sentencing of Xu Wenli will ex- worst of these took place after a Hong act a high cost,” and that “the enlight- Kong woman killed herself and her ened, open image that [Beijing] has two sons late last year. Apple Daily recently built up within the interna- photographed her laborer husband in tional community will suffer as a result bed with prostitutes—and later con- of this.” An editorial in Apple Daily fessed to having paid the man to pose remarked that Xu’s treatment “makes a for the picture. Incidents like these joke of the human rights covenant” explain why, in a survey last November that Beijing signed last year. by the University of Hong Kong’s Social Yet the same events elicited a differ- Sciences Research Center, more than ent reaction—or lack thereof—at The one-in-three respondents found Hong South China Morning Post, where the Dissident Wei Jingsheng at home in Kong’s news media to be “quite irre- editorial page remained silent on Xu’s Beijing in 1994 shortly before his sponsible” in their reporting. sentencing. The Post’s one English- rearrest and imprisonment. Photo by If all the agonizing at the Freedom language competitor, The Hong Kong Philip Cunningham. Forum conference has its intended af- Standard, chose to editorialize, but with fect, Hong Kong’s media may move a message quite different from the one unnervingly ambiguous section of the toward a greater respect for public at Apple and Ming Pao. “Dissidents,” Basic Law, China’s mini-constitution ethics and morality. Perhaps, also, to- The Standard declared, “Must Heed for Hong Kong. That section, known as ward greater professionalism. The Uni- History.” China has come a long way, Article 23, notes that Hong Kong is versity of Hong Kong is soon starting a and the livelihood of its masses has expected to enact laws to prohibit acts journalism degree program—the improved dramatically under Commu- of “treason, secession, sedition [and] territory’s first. nist rule, the editorial noted. “The dis- subversion” against the Chinese state. It’s unlikely, however, that this will sidents,” The Standard concluded, As yet, those laws haven’t been passed, coincide with the media becoming “would be better off making a thor- and the definition of those terms re- more outspoken on political issues. ough study of the mainland’s needs main a mystery. Could an investigative The delicate reality of Hong Kong’s before blindly pushing for full adop- article about Xinhua, or an editorial situation as an autonomous region that tion of the Western system without any calling for a Chinese leader to resign, answers to an autocratic state makes modifications whatsoever.” be “subversive”? No one knows. Cheung that inevitable. So does the self-inter- If some areas of coverage require Man-yee, director of broadcasting at est of Hong Kong’s media magnates, Hong Kong’s press to tread lightly, Radio Television Hong Kong, calls Ar- many of whom hope to make fortunes others appear to be practically off-lim- ticle 23 the “one thing that hangs over expanding their business into the main- its. Consider two of China’s most pow- our heads.” land market. For that to happen, their erful organizations operating in Hong Whatever void of politically sensi- safest bet is to avoid ruffling Beijing’s Kong: Xinhua news agency and the tive stories exists within Hong Kong’s feathers with aggressively critical com- Hong Kong office of China’s Foreign media has been filled with coverage of mentary and “unpatriotic” reporting. Ministry. Xinhua, China’s de facto em- sex scandals, violent crime and society “If I were an editor,” admits Mo, the bassy in Hong Kong under British rule, gossip—thus the wringing of hands journalist, “I’d do the same.” ■ is still believed to be the central coordi- over media ethics at that Freedom Fo- nator of Communist Party activity in rum conference. It’s hard to conclude Peter Stein is Managing Editor of The the territory today. The head of the that fears of covering certain political Asian Wall Street Journal, based in Foreign Ministry office, Ma Yuzhen, is issues alone has prompted the push Hong Kong. nominally China’s top-ranking repre- into sleaze. Intense competition within sentative in Hong Kong. Yet newspa- an overcrowded industry is no doubt a pers rarely, if ever, report on what more important factor. Some 20 news- these bodies do. “These kinds of taboo papers compete for the eyeballs of subjects, no one will touch them,” says Hong Kong’s 6.6 million residents, driv- Liu of the HKJA. ing many to make sex and crime a Fear of crossing the line in political higher coverage priority than politics. coverage ultimately stems from an Market-driven journalism, frets

50 Nieman Reports / Spring 1999 International Journalism When Numbers Talk, Journalists Help People Listen

By Brant Houston

enezuelan reporter Carlos methodically examined hundreds of seminars for other Danish journalists Subero constructed his own thousands, if not millions, of records. from print and broadcast. Employing V databases to analyze politicians’ By 1994, word of the CAR successes CAR techniques, they also reported performances. had reached other countries, and for- and wrote stories that disclosed the Swedish reporter Stefan Lisinski eign journalists began attending the side jobs of moonlighting legislators, exposed questionable practices involv- “boot camps” (weeklong, intense semi- outlined price gouging in telephone ing bankrupt companies by using a nars where many U.S. reporters were rates, and dissected election results. massive Swedish database of informa- trained) at the National Institute for Other reporters followed their leads tion on the companies and directors. Computer-Assisted Reporting (NICAR) for daily and longer-term project sto- Dutch journalist Marjan Agerbeek at the University of Missouri School of ries, sometimes constructing complex probed government data with spread- Journalism. In the past five years, jour- databases that would challenge more sheet software and was able to docu- nalists from many countries, including experienced U.S. journalists’ skills. ment poor financial planning by the Finland, Sweden, New Zealand, Ven- These two reporters have also writ- country’s 13 universities. ezuela, Argentina, the Netherlands, ten a CAR textbook based on their In the face of a general lack of liberal Norway, Brazil, Mexico, Russia, Bosnia Danish experiences and have created open-record laws and easily available and Canada have participated. And pe- an association and institute to encour- government databases, journalists riodically NICAR’s newsletter, Uplink, age widespread use of data analysis in throughout the world are learning how publishes articles on the successes and Danish journalism. to effectively use tools of computer- experiences of international journal- assisted reporting that extend past E- ists using CAR. The Mexico Project mail and searching the Internet. Com- puter-assisted reporting (or CAR) not At the same time Scandinavian journal- only involves searching sources on the The Danish Effort ists began venturing into database tech- Internet, but also doing data analysis niques, journalists in Central America with such software as spreadsheets and One example of how CAR has aided and South America also were taking database managers. Often journalists foreign journalists happened in Den- their first steps into CAR. Jump-started use the spreadsheets Microsoft Excel mark. In 1996, Nils Mulvad and by training provided by the Investiga- or Lotus 1-2-3 and the database manag- Flemming Svith from Jyllands-Posten, tive Reporters & Editor’s (IRE) Mexico ers Microsoft Access or Paradox. As the Denmark’s largest newspaper, partici- project, Periodistas de Investigacion, journalists become more skilled, they pated in our boot camp and visited U.S. journalists in Mexico, Venezuela, Bra- add statistical software—SAS or SPSS newspapers where reporters were us- zil and other nearby countries over- are two such programs—and mapping ing CAR extensively. Excited by what came their initial doubts, and the Rob- software—ArcView or MapInfo—to they saw, Mulvad and Svith returned to ert R. McCormick Tribune Foundation their repertoire. Denmark only to be met by what Mulvad provided extensive funding. In the United States, CAR was characterized as a mostly “defeatist at- Pedro Armendares, Director of launched a decade ago when dozens of titude,” since it was unclear how these Periodistas de Investigacion, has cited reporters began consistently practic- reporters might employ their newly numerous examples of how CAR has ing it to provide broader context and acquired skills. helped stories, whether journalists use depth to their stories. Those stories “Over the past three years this has U.S. data, their country’s data, or build attracted attention and garnered changed fundamentally,” Mulvad wrote their own databases. awards for the reporters who practiced recently in a paper for a workshop on • In Brazil, a journalist analyzed a U.S. this kind of information gathering. CAR. “Although no right of access to database from the Immigration and Now, in support of their stories, these electronic data exists, many authori- Naturalization Service for a front- reporters could claim not that they had ties are prepared to pass on informa- page story on the “brain drain” of randomly reviewed a few hundred tion anyway.” Brazilian executives to the United documents, but instead that they had Mulvad and Svith invited NICAR to Denmark in 1997 and 1998 to conduct States.

Nieman Reports / Spring 1999 51 International Journalism

• In a CAR workshop in Honduras, an including the case of a child caught which reporters from the United States editor was thrilled to find informa- at home with two drug plants who and Latin America swapped informa- tion on military aid to his country in received the same jail time as a drug tion on Web sites and databases on the U.S. General Accounting Office smuggler arrested while transport- environment, law enforcement and records. That information had been ing pounds of cocaine. drug smuggling, and illegal immigra- denied to him by Honduras officials tion. Periodistas also conducted hands- because of national security reasons. on computer training classes. Sharing Information and At NICAR’s annual conference, jour- • A Mexican journalist, Francisco Vidal, Experience has cruised the Internet for his busi- nalists take part in panels and hands- ness and economic beat, finding tips on classes. Through these conferences, More sophisticated techniques engen- and databases, and downloading on-line discussion groups, and the new dered by computer-assisted reporting data into Excel or Access to report international investigative reporting lead to sharing of information and re- on mergers, multinational compa- effort by the Center for Public Integ- porting experiences on the NICAR nies and company executives. rity, journalists have opportunity to listserv, nicar-l and at conferences in expand their skills, the breadth of their • In Brazil, a journalist dug into Bra- the United States and other countries. reporting, and their network of con- zilian government statistical reports For the past two years, journalists have tacts and knowledge. to show that in Sao Paulo the first gathered at NetMedia, an annual con- Leading international journalists cause of death among children be- ference in London, for a day of classes regard the mastering of these tech- tween 10 and 14 years old is homi- in computer-assisted reporting led by niques as critical to journalism and its cide and that often the killer is a NICAR. The classes cover the basic uses place in the 21st Century. “Basically,” parent. of the Internet, spreadsheets and data- as Nils Mulvad recently said, “the aim is • Reporters from the daily Publico, in base managers. Last year, about 200 to secure democracy in the society of Guadalajara, Mexico, and El Univer- journalists from Great Britain, other the future.” ■ sal, in Caracas, have built databases European countries and Africa attended from judicial hard copy to methodi- the classes. Organized by Milverton Brant Houston is Executive Director cally profile and background felons Wallace of London’s City University, of Investigative Reporters and Edi- convicted for drug-related offenses. NetMedia will again offer a day of more tors, Inc. and the National Institute For example, in The Publico series, than two dozen classes in July of this for Computer-Assisted Reporting. An reporters found that only five per- year. associate professor at the University cent of drug arrests resulted from In 1997 and 1998, IRE and of Missouri School of Journalism, he police investigations. The stories also Periodistas also offered training at “Bor- also is author of “Computer-Assisted uncovered disparities in sentencing, der Gatherings” in Mexican cities in Reporting: A Practical Guide.”

International Journalists Use Internet Technology to Breach Borders

By Maud S. Beelman

journalist in Zimbabwe, research- ternational databases that might have formation age. And with United States ing a story with ties to Sweden, material for an investigative piece. dominance in cyberspace technology, A needed to contact an investiga- The ties that bind these journalists it is not surprising that international tive reporter in that Scandinavian coun- are in cyberspace. Each posted notes journalists lag behind their American try, though he knew no one there. In on different journalism listservs—elec- counterparts. But increasingly, the Montreal, a French-speaking reporter, tronic mailing lists geared to specific Internet (E-mail, listservs, Web sites) is working on an article about corporate groups—in hopes that someone read- becoming a means by which journal- sleuths, was seeking help from a U.S. ing their message could help. ists around the world network and colleague versed in “competitive intel- Journalists have generally not been collaborate and, with relatively little ligence.” An American correspondent, the quickest to grasp the full range of effort, increase their knowledge base meanwhile, wanted to know about in- opportunities offered by the new in- (skepticism about the accuracy of

52 Nieman Reports / Spring 1999 International Journalism

Internet content notwithstanding). ICIJ conducts most of its business nalists still work at the low end of the As I write, for example, a freedom- via E-mail and through its Web site. high-tech spectrum, there are a few of-information listserv posting has just Members from 31 countries met for the stunning examples of how adventure- arrived. On this particular day it reveals first time last November at a three-day some reporters have made the new a little-known part of the Food and conference sponsored by the Nieman technology work for them. In late 1996, Drug Administration’s Web site that Foundation. (Nieman Curator Bill Yugoslav authorities shut down the identifies troublesome manufacturers. Kovach is Chairman of ICIJ’s Advisory state-owned transmitter of the country’s A different posting advises that Nige- Committee and a member of the popular independent radio station B92, rian journalists are fighting a proposed Center’s Advisory Board.) The gather- which was reporting on street protests section of the draft constitution that ing focused on old-fashioned brain- that followed the annulment of mu- will inhibit freedom of expression. Yet storming for future projects, as well as nicipal elections won by the opposi- another announces the availability of on learning more about sophisticated tion. B92, which had several of the an English-language edition of the technology to aid their efforts. Patrick same Web sites on servers in the United Hungarian journal Replika. Each time, Ball, an electronic security specialist States and the Netherlands, moved its their postings provide an invaluable from the American Association for the broadcasts onto the Internet. Using potpourri of helpful hints and useful Advancement of Science, explained regular phone lines, B92 posted writ- information for journalists. how journalists could use E-mail en- ten news accounts of the protests along Beyond offering specialized discus- cryption software to keep their with sound clips on its Web site. The sion, listservs direct their members to cyberspace correspondence private and BBC then picked up the audio from the Web sites packed with information secure. This software can be down- site and rebroadcast it to Yugoslavia. about subjects they are trying to learn loaded free of charge from an Internet Shutting down B92 at that point would more about, such as the Asian studies site. Human rights groups around the have required the government to dis- virtual library site constructed by world, which have a vital need to pro- able the country’s phone grid. Australia’s National University in tect information and sources, are al- “The number of Internet users in Canberra, or to sites such as ProfNet, ready using the E-mail encryption. Serbia is not that big, but the number which boasts of being “the shortest Knowing about various national laws of radio users is,” explained Dragan distance between a journalist and a is essential, however. A half-dozen or Cicic, a former B92 reporter and ICIJ source.” (On it, one can post questions so countries, including Israel, Russia member. “As soon as it became clear and someone with expertise in that and China, have strong domestic con- that there was no sense in shutting off area is likely to respond to them.) And trols on the use of cryptography and the [B92] transmitter, the government there are ever-growing numbers of Web penalties for violating them. (France repaired it.” sites dedicated to special reporting announced in January that it was drop- The Internet’s ability to circumvent needs, such as science or human rights. ping its long-held restrictions.) United government censorship has not gone Even some of the world’s more ob- States law, for example, prohibits the unnoticed or unchallenged. In China, scure newspapers, in Bhutan or export of the kind of strong cryptogra- a 30-year-old computer engineer was Vanuatu, now have on-line editions. phy that is used in this country, even sentenced in January to two years in The accessibility and breadth of such though the same level of encryption is jail for alleged subversion for provid- simple-to-use border-spanning tech- already available overseas. ing 30,000 Chinese E-mail addresses to nology have also given birth to new Other high-tech options available to an on-line publication run by Chinese working alliances that were previously journalists worldwide include satellite dissidents in the United States. Similar impossible. For example, the Interna- imagery. Christopher Simpson, the prosecutions have been reported in tional Consortium of Investigative Jour- Director of American University’s Bahrain, Malaysia and Turkey. nalists (ICIJ) has formed as a network Project on Satellite Imagery and the Human Rights Watch estimates that of leading investigative reporters to News Media in Washington, D.C. [See Internet access providers in half a dozen work on cross-border investigative Simpson’s accompanying article], ex- countries use filtering technologies and projects. ICIJ is a project of the Center plained how relatively high-resolution voluntary measures “to make prior cen- for Public Integrity, which is a non- satellite imagery can be downloaded sorship of on-line communications a profit group based in Washington, D.C., from the Internet and used to assist in reality.” This happens because in these that is well-known for its detailed in- reporting. Investigations in which such countries the Internet service provid- vestigations of corruption and money imagery could be useful include ana- ers are either state-owned or required in politics. ICIJ was launched in late lyzing the impact of mass deforestation to have licenses issued by the state and, 1997 at a time when the steady spread in Central America and its role in the as such, might be required to use such of Internet use and the dissolution of flooding and landslides that accompa- filters. In its 1999 report about free- Cold War barriers had reduced consid- nied Hurricane Mitch, or tracking mass dom of expression on the Internet, erably the limitations of doing major refugee movements or confirming mili- Human Rights Watch warned, “The investigative projects outside the con- tary claims of battlefield successes. trend is towards extending these tech- fines of national borders. Although most international jour- nologies more broadly, with global

Nieman Reports / Spring 1999 53 International Journalism

implications for free expression.” Brit- and Africa, where in most nations tele- on perfecting translation software, now ain, for example, has urged European phone lines are scarce and costly, and only about 85 percent reliable. countries to adopt an E-mail intercep- dial-up access charges are prohibitively The hope is that someday soon such tion system that would allow uncondi- high, reportedly averaging $10 an hour. software will help to break down lin- tional government access to E-mails on Parikh estimates that people in only a guistic barriers the way that the Internet the grounds that it is necessary to fight few countries are still unable to con- is breaching geographic ones. ■ cross-border crime, the HRW report nect with the Internet. said. Other factors guarantee, too, that Maud S. Beelman is Director of the Totally blocking Internet access in a international journalists will rely on International Consortium of Investi- given country is like trying to attack a the Internet more in the future to con- gative Journalists (www.icij.org) moving target. And Internet use is grow- nect with colleagues and vast resources and a former foreign correspondent ing exponentially. The current boom of information. Journalism groups, for The Associated Press. ICIJ staffers areas are Asia-Pacific and Latin America, such as Investigative Reporters & Edi- Zoë Davidson and Linda Yun con- said Jagdish Parikh, an on-line research tors, offer computer-assisted report- tributed to this report. associate for Human Rights Watch. ing seminars in an increasing number Trailing behind are the Middle East of countries. And work is continuing

If Birds Were Reporters, What Would Their Eyes Reveal?

By Christopher Simpson

illions of non-classified, high- resolution images of earth are Malready available to news or- ganizations. Thousands more are be- ing collected each day. With a little practice, photo editors and journalists can browse large and well-indexed ar- chives of many of these images from their desktops, pinning down over- head imagery of Indian and Pakistani nuclear test sites, newly discovered temples at Angkor Wat, Cambodia, for- est fires devastating Central America, or tracking the touchy issue of water politics in California’s farm country. There has been a lot of hype about this new form of information gather- ing, yet it is indisputable that medium- and high-resolution images of events on earth gathered by satellites and U-2 surveillance jets are finding their way into the reporting repertoire of print, broadcast and on-line journalists. (Be- This image of Birkenau death camp taken in August 1944 shows prisoners lined cause much of this data about earth are up at gas chambers and other parts of the camp. Though photographed from an collected outside the narrow bounds airplane, the image is roughly equivalent in clarity and sharpness to those cap- of visible light, in the infrared and tured now by commercial satellites. Courtesy U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

54 Nieman Reports / Spring 1999 International Journalism microwave radar range, then converted la Terre (SPOT) satellites, Canada’s within days of the first failed launch. to more conventional photos for easier Radarsat International, India’s Remote The Lockheed-Martin/Mitsubishi Indus- use, scientists use the word “imagery” Sensing Agency, Japan’s ADEOS/AVNIR tries/E-Systems venture known as Space or “image” rather than photograph.) system, the European Space Agency’s Imaging Inc. had to delay launch of its Among the examples of recent cover- Eurimage division, a Russian venture commercial satellite for more than a age that has relied on these images are with North Carolina-based Aerial Im- year, but predicts it will have its high the following: ages Inc and Microsoft Corp., and sev- resolution satellite aloft by summer • The New York Times gave front- eral U.S. government agencies, to name 1999. The buzz on the street is that a page treatment to high-resolution a few. The world’s largest and most subcontractor’s laser gyroscopes used imagery of Baghdad made public by sophisticated archive of satellite and to stabilize the satellite’s sensors dur- the Department of Defense follow- aerial imagery is operated by the U.S. ing flight have tended to wear out more ing the December 1998 cruise mis- Geological Survey (USGS) and housed quickly than expected, thus reducing sile attacks on Iraqi intelligence head- at the EROS data center near Sioux the satellite’s useful life. Space Imag- quarters. Falls, South Dakota. (Contrary to popu- ing remains upbeat on its launch plans, • CNN played the same images at the lar belief, NASA’s collection of earth but declines comment on the reasons top of its news coverage. observation imagery is considerably for the delays. For the moment, a dark smaller than that of the USGS, and it horse candidate, OrbImage (a subsid- • Magazines such as Archeology, Na- generally ends up being transferred to iary of Orbital Sciences in Dulles, Vir- tional Geographic and Scientific the EROS center for archival storage. ginia) might enjoy the lead among U.S. American frequently present analy- The route traveled by imagery collected companies in the race to be first in sis based on high-resolution imag- by U.S. military and intelligence agen- space with a commercial, high resolu- ery to their readers, as do relatively cies is usually more convoluted than tion earth orbiting satellite. obscure academic journals such as that of NASA’s. But in the end it, too, There is little doubt that one or The Nonproliferation Review and usually ends up housed at the USGS.) more of the U.S. high resolution imag- Science and Global Security. Presently, almost all unclassified im- ing companies will eventually become • Modest eight-page monthly news- ages produced by the U.S. government commercially viable. During recent letters such as the USAID-financed entities can be studied and used by months, the National Imagery and Famine Early Warning System Bulle- journalists at minimal or no cost. Mapping Agency has guaranteed U.S.- tin regularly compile weather satel- We hear often about the potential based imaging companies purchases lite imagery to provide informed for U.S.-based private companies to of up to $600 million worth of their estimates of rains and crop health in sell high-resolution imagery of earth products over the next five years—and Africa. And it doesn’t take a rocket on demand. This is still an enterprise that is before any of the satellites have scientist, as the saying goes, to see waiting to be launched. Companies been launched successfully. (NIMA is the relationship between Africa’s such as Lockheed-Martin and Ball Aero- the reorganized version of the better ecological crisis and the potential space, who own significant shares in known Defense Mapping Agency, Na- for renewed civil war or mass flight start-up earth imaging companies, are tional Reconnaissance Office, and sev- of refugees in the Sahel or the Horn among the world’s technological lead- eral officially non-existent, multi-bil- of Africa. ers in design and construction of earth lion dollar government imagery Imagery and a related technology, observation satellites, in part due to programs.) Other national govern- interactive geographic information sys- multi-billion dollar contracts with U.S. ments and major industrial concerns, tems (GIS), seem to be particularly intelligence and defense agencies. But among them the governments of well-suited for on-line publishing of building the most advanced govern- Canada, South Korea and Saudi Arabia, news. Media Web sites such as ment spy satellite when cost is no ob- have offered somewhat similar guaran- washingtonpost.com and CBS.com, as ject is one thing; building a stripped- tees. From the point of view of the well as others, use this technology to down, unclassified version of a similar President’s National Security Council enhance their reporting. The Washing- bird within the cost constraints of the (which sets broad U.S. space policy), ton Post Web site, for example, in- private marketplace is quite another, the potential for profit and geopoliti- cludes interactive, multimedia compo- and it hasn’t been fully realized yet. cal leverage derived from the commer- sitions made up of satellite imagery, The first U.S. corporate launch of a cialization of these technologies is sim- maps and still photography of Iraq, high resolution commercial satellite ply too important to pass up. along with text and “hotlinks” to de- by EarthWatch Inc of Longmont, Colo- Significantly, the news media’s en- classified Defense Intelligence Agency rado, failed to achieve a useful orbit in try into systematic use of the products and UNSCOM (United Nations arms early 1998. That company remains com- of these technologies presents chal- inspectors’) documents. petitive, however, due to its Digital lenges and opportunities that relate Fully operational sources of satellite Globe imagery index and planned directly to the core of news organiza- images include France’s well-estab- launch of a second satellite in 1999. tions’ responsibilities to the public. lished Systeme pour L’Observation de But it also laid off much of its staff Earth observation from space provides

Nieman Reports / Spring 1999 55 International Journalism

Three satellite images of the identical Rondonia region of the Amazon taken in 1975, 1986 and 1992. These images vividly illustrate the changes occurring in the rain forest due to illegal clear-cut logging.

Images courtesy of USGS/Landsat.

56 Nieman Reports / Spring 1999 International Journalism rich sources of information that can aid $5,000 per image and up. And there is the vital issues for their home neigh- reporters in gathering information for no guarantee that the satellite will cap- borhoods using interactive maps, stories and publishing their findings. ture exactly what the news editor might words, imagery and photographs. These images are more than an intrigu- wish to see. Further, an emergency, If democracy depends on an in- ing backdrop for illustrating stories. one-time consultation with a trained formed electorate, then potentially, at When used with a geographic informa- image analyst can cost hundreds of least, the news media’s use of geo- tion system, such imagery helps read- dollars per day. spatial technologies can help us look ers and viewers analyze and visualize Today, news organizations should more deeply into places and issues that some complex social issues in some- team up with universities, think tanks haven’t been easily accessible. As with what the same way skillful weather or appropriate experts to ensure they meteorology, accurately interpreted forecasts concentrate billions of bits of accurately report what satellites and earth imagery and interactive maps information into a map or diagram that geographic information systems are permit millions of people to see in a can be readily understood. able to see. Some observers say the day few seconds what would otherwise take The real power of earth observation is not so far off when a large news a half hour or more to explain in words. imagery and GIS are their ability to organization may have image interpre- More than that, when produced judi- help illuminate almost any economic, tation and GIS experts on staff in much ciously and fairly, this form of informa- social or political issue that has a geo- the same way they now employ meteo- tion-rich news can enhance the visual graphic component. Better informed, rologists. For the moment, however, appeal of media in similar ways to how geographically-based reporting can be news organizations are likely to achieve the arrival of photojournalism trans- done on housing and transportation best results from these technologies, at formed the presentation of news in planning in midsize cities, crime con- a moderate price, by building carefully papers and magazines. trol, armed conflicts in Nigeria or along selected computer libraries of data rel- Some caveats are crucial. Commer- the Turkish/Syrian border, enforcement evant to ongoing stories that are al- cial earth observation does not create of arms control or environmental pro- most certain to remain in the news, the “all-seeing eye” that some fear (and tection treaties, or the tracking of com- such as the Middle East, the Korean others want) because it will not be able mercial fishing violations off Georges peninsula or selected world capitals. to achieve that degree of visual acuity. Bank, for example, when journalists For metropolitan-based news media, If your company really wants a photo learn how to use these sources of infor- metro-area data is often cheap, flexible of, say, Barbra Streisand’s wedding, it’s mation. Even midsized news organiza- and applicable to stories on a remark- far cheaper and more efficient to hire a tions already have the potential capac- ably wide range of issues, including small airplane and a photographer, and ity to provide comprehensive coverage crime, the environment and urban that option has been open to news of county-by-county farm production sprawl and debates about new high- organizations since at least the 1930’s. reports from Illinois, Nebraska or other ways or sewer systems. Television news most likely will not agricultural centers that can be cus- American University’s School of enjoy the immediate turnaround for tomized for readers or viewers in those Communication has helped pioneer high-resolution imagery that spot news counties by using these technologies. such work among scientists and jour- reports require, even though Radarsat Prices for imagery range from about nalists from more than two dozen na- International and an experimental Eu- $30 to more than $3,000 per scene, tions. On-line mailing lists such as ropean program can deliver four- to depending on the age, source and [email protected] (which special- six-hour turnaround times between ground resolution of the image, as well izes in imagery and human rights is- acquisition of an image and delivery to as the volume of purchases. Many im- sues) and [email protected] (for the a customer. (While that is an extraordi- agery companies are responsive to re- more technically minded) have begun nary advance for the imaging industry, quests from bona fide news organiza- to trade tips on effective newsroom the catch remains that it may take more tions for occasional free use of in-stock projects, as well as on identifying the time than a television news producer imagery, as long as a customary source pitfalls and ethical questions that these can afford for the right satellite to ar- credit and copyright notice appears powerful new tools inevitably raise. rive at the right spot at the right time to with the image’s reproduction. Some Recent A.U. student projects included acquire the right image.) companies even post an “image of the studies of mining accidents in Colo- What earth observation combined week” on the Internet which is avail- rado and the Philippines, the civil war with GIS can do is provide glimpses able to the media to download at no in Kosovo, and jungle fires in northern into places closed to reporters and cost. (Those interested should contact Brazil that reached the size of the state photographers, such as war zones and the imaging companies directly for of Rhode Island. The school is now nuclear test sites. They can vividly com- details.) Of course, news organizations working with high school journalists pare and contrast options for environ- that demand emergency, first-priority from the Washington, D.C. area to cre- mental protection or upgrading trans- acquisition and processing of new im- ate interactive, geographic Web sites. portation systems, and they can ages will have to pay for that privilege, On these sites, a new generation of document almost any medium or large- with negotiated prices ranging from journalists is learning how to portray scale human activity such as the build-

Nieman Reports / Spring 1999 57 International Journalism ing of a dam—or of a concentration camp. They can reveal the health of Web Sites of Satellite Images forests and help identify urban neigh- borhoods where construction of a http://edcwww.cr.usgs.gov/webglis—The U.S. Geological Survey’s EROS Data Center is the modest clinic could dramatically cut government’s primary repository for satellite images, aerial photos, unclassified intelligence costs at city hospital emergency rooms. imagery from the 1960’s and 1970’s, topographic information and mapping data of all sorts. And in some instances, GIS computer GLIS is the primary index to the collection and is relatively easy to use considering the vast scope analysis might help link clusters of dis- of the material. Declassification of certain intelligence satellite imagery from the later 1970’s and ease to specific toxic waste dumps. 1980’s is presently underway and will most likely be first available via the USGS site. The images provide journalists with the raw materials for checking up on http://gcmd.gsfc.nasa.gov and international compliance with arms http://www-eosdis.ornl.gov/daacpages/otherdaacs.html—These NASA sites are gateways control, environmental and some as- to a giant, evolving effort to link indexes to imagery around the world known as EOSDIS. The pects of human rights treaties. One effort is by no means complete and sometimes operates awkwardly, but the sites do permit very important story for which this access to a very wide range of unclassified U.S. government imagery and scientific data gathered kind of coverage has already proved from outer space. invaluable involves the development and deployment of weapons of mass http://waa.saa.noaa.gov—The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration’s destruction in countries where access index to its weather imagery provides high quality and often free imagery of continent-sized parts by any means other than satellite imag- of earth. In addition to overhead images of hurricanes and typhoons, it provides wide-angle ery is impossible. imagery necessary to see the scope of forest fires throughout the northern Amazon, environmen- When designing news projects us- tal crises in northern Africa and similar very large scale phenomena. ing these imaging techniques, it is prob- http://www.crisp.nus.edu.sg/crisp.html—This Singapore-based ground station provides an ably prudent for journalists to take index to imagery collected over Southeast and much of South Asia by satellites from the United their initial cues from scientists, intelli- gence experts and the major resource States, Canada, Europe, SPOT, Japan and other sources. corporations who have long used ear- http://isis.dlr.de/services/ISIS/ISIS-query.html—This index, sponsored by the German lier, more awkward versions of earth Aerospace Center, provides convenient access to imagery of Europe from several sources as well observation and GIS techniques. And as links to other indexes worldwide. remember that these images are most http://www.eurimage.it/einet/einet_home.shtml—The European Space Agency operates effectively used to document “big pic- ture” changes over time, changes that this user-friendly index to imagery collected over Europe, much of the Middle East, and western take place almost unnoticeably, yet af- territories of the former USSR. fect the lives of millions of people. http://www.fas.org/irp/index.html—Operated by the Federation of American Scientists, this Earth observation and GIS will never index specializes in declassified “spy satellite” imagery and support for treaty verification replace the emotional power of a close- projects. up photograph of a human face. They http://www.spaceimaging.com/home/products/carterra/worldview/index.html and do, however, provide powerful tools that can transform and enrich demo- http://www.spaceimaging.com/home/products/carterra/carterra3d/index.html—This is cratic debate or reveal some secret Space Imaging Corporation’s Carterra imagery index, providing access to commercial and terrors of a dictatorship to the world’s unclassified governmental imagery gathered over the United States. The second URL provides the view. Those are rare and valuable in- first access to “assembly line” (as distinct from custom-built) fly-through, moving satellite struments in any journalist’s tool chest, images that simulate the view that a low flying aircraft might see over, say, China’s nuclear test and ones that many journalists will range at Lop Nor. want to learn how to use properly. ■ http://www.spot.com and http://www.spot.com/spot/home/sirius/welcome.htm—SPOT Image’s commercial DALI index presently costs $100 annually to subscribe. It provides an Chris Simpson specializes in infor- unusually well-organized and complete index for medium resolution imagery (about 30 meters mation literacy issues at the School per pixel) for almost any point on earth. SPOT’s imagery at present is often more complete and of Communication at American more current than that of any of its competitors, though not necessarily as useful for presenta- University in Washington, D.C. He tion of close-up shots of events on the ground. The new Sirius index promises to maintain DALI’s directs the school’s Project on Satel- functionality, offer new services, and be available for free. The Sirius product is predicted to be lite Imagery and the News Media. Simpson spent more than 15 years as available this spring. a journalist and is author or editor http://terraserver. microsoft.com—This very large data collection combines USGS aerial of five books on communication, photography of the continental United States with very high resolution imagery gathered through- national security and human rights. out the world by Russian Sovinformsputnik satellites. The USGS data can be downloaded for free; the high quality Russian data is offered at a modest cost but is spotty in its coverage. ■

58 Nieman Reports / Spring 1999 Books

As foreign reporting struggles to find its foothold in the news that Americans watch, listen to and read, reporters write books about human tragedies they observe. They hope someone will pay attention. We open this section by examining some current trends in foreign news reporting. Deborah Amos, who for many years was a foreign correspondent with National Public Radio, reviews “Compassion Fatigue: How the Media Sell Disease, Famine, War and Death,” by Susan D. Moeller. Amos concludes that Moeller’s indictment of the media as “dulling the audience’s natural reaction to tragedy” falls a bit shy of the mark in explaining why fewer and fewer foreign stories receive prominent coverage by American media. Murray Seeger, a former foreign correspondent, reviews three books about foreign conflicts— Bosnia, Chechnya and Rwanda—written by journalists. In his review, he explores the difficult circumstances foreign correspondents confront in the post-Cold War era. Roy Gutman, a Newsday correspondent whose reporting disclosed systematic killing at detention camps in northern Bosnia, previews the summer release of the “Crimes of War Project,” an effort to educate news media about humanitarian law. Only by knowing what constitutes a “war crime,” he argues, can journalists accurately report on atrocities they see in covering regional conflicts. Orville Schell, Dean of Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism and a long-time foreign correspondent, looks at business reporting as a new force in foreign news coverage during a Nieman Seminar. Athan G. Theoharis, an expert on secrecy, writes about the government’s oversight of “secrets.” He explains its impact on what journalists (and the public) ought to be able to know by focusing on Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s book as well as on a collection of essays which he edited. Joseph Williams reviews a biography of Ted Poston, The New York Post’s first black reporter. As Williams writes, Poston’s “best work transcended race, but was inextricably bound and ultimately limited by it.” Ray Scherer, who reported for NBC News from the White House for nearly two decades (Truman to Johnson), reviews the memoirs of Richard S. Salant, who was President of CBS News during some of those years. “Salant is gone and so, increasingly, is the straightforward, no-nonsense style of reporting news on the air which he exemplified,” Scherer writes. Tom Witosky, sports-projects reporter for The Des Moines Register, reviews a memoir by Jack Whitaker, a man whose broadcasting career spanned more than 40 years. Golf is his passion, but as Witosky observes the book could be “an interesting read” for non-golfers, as well. ■

Nieman Reports / Spring 1999 59 Books

Unraveling the Mystery of Vanishing Foreign News

Compassion Fatigue: How the Media Sell Disease, Famine, War and Death Susan D. Moeller Routledge. 390 Pages. $27.50.

By Deborah Amos

Any reporter working in the twilight of the small personal dramas that appear the Cold War and into the 1990’s knows necessary if connections with today’s how much journalism has changed. American audience are to be made. The Cold War world was a more pre- The news business, that’s changed, dictable place for foreign correspon- too. The number of news outlets has dents. We kept score on the ideologi- exploded, fragmenting the audience, cal battles of the 20th Century. While and in this competitive news landscape some of the hot spots of that period budgets are being slashed after being threatened to spill over into conflicts scrutinized by different sets of eyes. that could have involved the super- Network news operations now have to powers, the risk of larger involvement show a profit, just like every other meant diplomats were thick on the division, as corporate owners keep a ground. watchful eye on the bottom line. In those days, the news business The notion that the public airwaves was more predictable, too. There was are a public trust and that news is a always a full house of television crews, civic responsibility has vanished. The print magazine and radio reporters for real money is in news packaging to a the big stories. Television news func- prime-time audience rather than news tioned as the public service division of reporting. Polls also show the public’s hugely profitable networks. News bud- appetite for foreign news has changed gets reflected the American public’s from a desire for a full meal to a willing- interest in the world, and an important ness to pick from a revolving tray of international development would likely light appetizers. In part, this is because tragedy. Her charge: “The media is lead the nightly newscasts. there are other courses on the news now part of the entertainment indus- table. Science news and health news, try that no longer informs but over- “The public’s with real breakthroughs that have a hypes select crisis stories.” The result is direct impact on an individual’s quality “compassion fatigue,” a disease that appetite for foreign of life, are more likely to become leads. causes viewers and readers to yawn news has changed A tragedy in Rwanda has to compete and turn the page or click to another from a desire for a for air and print time with the news of station. The book is a disappointment the cloning of a sheep. not because her concept lacks currency full meal to a In this atmosphere, it’s no wonder but because Moeller, the Director of willingness to pick that more and more journalists are Brandeis University’s journalism pro- from a revolving tray turning their reporter notebooks into gram, fails to make her case. full-length books. There is simply no It’s unfortunate, because there is a of light appetizers.” other form of communication that gives case to be made. The general level of such depth to their experiences. international reporting has slipped in In the last few years famine, disease However, in her book “Compassion the last few years. The number of for- and civil wars, the small, nasty, internal Fatigue: How the Media Sell Disease, eign news minutes on the evening news conflicts, have become the regular re- Famine, War and Death,” Susan Moeller has dropped considerably. While there porting duties of foreign correspon- takes a different approach. She has are foreign news stories that deserve dents. These journalists have to take tracked the U.S. news coverage of coverage (certainly more than they are greater personal risk for stories that bloodshed and pestilence around the receiving now), the economics of tele- involve death and destruction. And to planet and indicts the media for dull- vision news has altered the process of tell these stories, reporters are chasing ing the audience’s natural reaction to how coverage is assigned, and this ac-

60 Nieman Reports / Spring 1999 Books counts for some of the dearth of cover- lofty but unrealistic sentiment, espe- were occurring. age in these important stories. cially when it is attached with the job However, all is not as gloomy as As consumers in this changing world journalists are supposed to do. As vet- Moeller’s book suggests. She writes of news, it’s important to understand eran war correspondent Tom Gjelten that “we, the consumers of the Ameri- why some news stories get more atten- wrote about the role of journalists in can media are also tied to the end of a tion than others. But Moeller relies on such situations: “Their major responsi- too-short cord. Our cord is the media her all-purpose notion of “compassion bility is to see that the world is ex- itself.” But there are now more news fatigue” as the explanation for the cri- plained, not that it is improved.” sources than ever before. Cable chan- sis in foreign reporting during the past Moeller hits pay dirt on her critique nels are filled with programs designed couple of years. Her measure is far too of the November 4, 1995 coverage of to capture audiences who have special confining to explain the enormous the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, interests, including foreign events. In changes that have taken place both in Israel’s Prime Minister. The compari- any one evening in New York City you the audience’s receptivity and in the son with the assassination of Egyptian can see the Russian parliament debate, reporters’ circumstances. President Anwar Sadat 14 years earlier, as well as the British and Canadian which her research helps us to see, is news. News from around the world, “Budget fatigue is telling. from sources never before accessible Following Sadat’s assassination, all so easily or so quickly, is on the Internet. more likely the key three television networks scrambled to There is no doubt that we are in an explanation for the send anchors and crews to Egypt. It evolving world of news reporting. As state of the news was considered newsworthy to explain consumers we have to learn how to the death of one of America’s best navigate that world to remain informed. business today than friends in the region. Yitzhak Rabin It may well be that news about foreign compassion fatigue.” was killed on a Saturday afternoon, events will appear on a cable business U.S. time. I was in a television news- channel that deals with stock market Moeller is at her best when weaving room at the time and Moeller is accu- prices, but the story will get coverage. recent events with media coverage. One rate when she writes: “It was an incon- Although Moeller writes that: “On this example is her analysis of Saddam venient time for the networks. Sponsors side of the Atlantic, the now defunct Hussein’s 1988 campaign of terror were paying major money for commer- Brooklyn Eagle reminded its report- against the Kurds that included a poi- cials during the Saturday afternoon ers: ‘A dog fight in Brooklyn is bigger son gas attack and other attempts at sports programs. To interrupt them than a revolution in China,’” this is no extermination. It is true that reports on meant the loss of some premium dol- longer the case. These days a revolu- the tragedy of the Kurds were sporadic, lars. ABC, airing college football, broke tion in China is covered contempora- and the coverage failed to ignite the into the Penn State-Northwestern game neously; in fact, the extraordinary outrage that was due. However, re- with special reports only twice between events of Tiananmen Square could be porters’ access to northern Iraq was 3:00 and 5:00 p.m., the first time at seen live on CNN. extremely limited. It is more likely that 3:30. And NBC, which was televising This might not have been what “com- access was the problem here rather the Notre Dame-Navy football game, passion fatigued” viewers would choose than Moeller’s charge that “the media waited until 3:27 to first tell its audi- to watch on a Friday night, but the like heroes and villains” and the Kurds ence of the shooting.” It was a shocking choice was theirs to make. And while didn’t fit the bill. example of the change in the television it’s true that television news coverage On the crisis in Somalia, Moeller news business. from China and other foreign places gives an excellent recounting of the Budget fatigue is more likely the key has diminished considerably in the events that led to this man-made fam- explanation for the state of the news absence of such gripping and visual ine. It is important to remember that business today than compassion fa- moments, the reasons merit a broader the collapse of the Siad Barre regime tigue. Media mergers, changing net- and more complex analysis than brought this country into its civil war. work ownership, the emergence of Moeller’s book provides. ■ It is significant that these events took cable outlets have all contributed to place at the opening of the Gulf War changing the line-up and content of Deborah Amos, a 1992 Nieman and so were mostly ignored. The story news programs more than any other Fellow, has been an ABC news corre- did become front-page news when non-economic factor. And from the spondent since 1994. She was the President George Bush sent Marines to perspective of the news consumer, National Public Radio Bureau Chief the Somali capital. However, it is al- Moeller hits on another truth when she and a foreign correspondent for NPR most silly to suggest, as Moeller does, writes that perhaps another explana- from 1982 to 1994. that “the images pushed Americans to tion for compassion fatigue is that there care about helping the Somalis but the are just too many tragedies happening pictures did not push them to call for at the same time, tragedies that in ear- an end of famine everywhere.” This is a lier times we would not have known

Nieman Reports / Spring 1999 61 Books

Foreign Correspondents Transform Their Coverage Into Books

Blood and Vengeance: One Family’s Story of the War in Bosnia Chuck Sudetic Norton. 393 Pages. $26.95.

Chechnya: Calamity in the Caucasus Carlotta Gall and Thomas de Waal New York University Press. 416 Pages. $26.95.

We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda Philip Gourevitch Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 353 Pages. $25.

By Murray Seeger

Bosnia, Chechnya and Rwanda form a United Nations and individual major like most newcomers with limited ex- trio of disaster areas. Different worlds, powers from intervening. In fact, each perience. He decided he was not cut different people, but common strains of these authors puts their part of the out for daily journalism and fled back of ethnic and religious tension, mur- world under a microscope without to a tenuous existence in Belgrade, der and mayhem trace themselves adequately placing their story within a pouring his soul into this book. through the history of these lands. broader context of post-Cold War glo- “The old addiction [the war], my During the last decade, each of these bal politics. mania, seized me once again and I areas has been manipulated by indig- Bosnia is the best known of these broke the promise I had made to my enous politicians who used vicious, stories since it is part of the contempo- wife,” Sudetic recalls in the book. “I medieval tools to consolidate their rary history of the dissolution of the took off alone for one last stint in power and to remove perceived en- former Yugoslavia into its constituent Bosnia for the sake of a few stories and emies and opponents. The outside republics. Chuck Sudetic takes a quite words that might lay some living memo- world, especially the Western powers, personal approach to telling this story ries of the dead and of a dying world largely stood aside when each region in his book. He explores the bloody silently to rest.” His intense emotions exploded into violence. In none of events of the war in Bosnia by linking give a strong flavor to his reporting of these places, where internal ethnic, his battlefield reporting to the lives of Bosnia and Herzegovina, where the religious and nationalist conflicts have his wife’s extended Muslim family, who population is divided among Muslims, arisen, can anyone say that peace has lived in a mountainous region not far Orthodox and Roman Catholics. been restored. from the border with Serbia. This is the Sudetic describes particularly well the The three books under review rep- same area about which Ivo Andric wrote cynical manipulations of the Serb resent approaches typical in journal- his classic novel, “The Bridge on the leader, Slobodan Milosevic, as he got ists’ books. The authors offer moun- Drina,” which helped him win the Nobel local surrogates to carry out his “ethnic tains of meticulous reporting, including Prize for Literature in 1961. As tensions cleansing” campaign in Bosnia. the essential local histories that torture between the Bosnian Muslims and On the other hand, it is depressing each area. As book authors, these jour- Serbs rose, locals smashed a monu- to see this bright young reporter tear nalists have fewer constraints in how ment to Andric that had been placed himself apart over his first major story. they employ their reporting, express on the 16th Century Turkish bridge He has now left journalism and emi- their personal views, and air their frus- and threw it into the river, claiming the grated to Canada, but this profession trations than they do when acting as writer had put Muslims in a bad light. needs more reporters like Sudetic. His reporters. But as often happens when Sudetic was an American living in experience in Bosnia also reminds us journalists step outside their conven- Belgrade, where he had met his wife, of how many significant foreign stories tional role, they tend to wade into when he began reporting on the war as are being covered by “stringers” rather trouble when they attempt to analyze a stringer for The New York Times. than seasoned staff correspondents as the politics outside the selected re- After five years he was given a staff job major media cut back on their interna- gions or to suggest alternatives to poli- and transferred to the metropolitan tional bureaus and staff. Thinking of cies that delayed or prevented the desk in New York, where he was treated this made me nostalgic for the stories

62 Nieman Reports / Spring 1999 Books

Rwandan refugees board a cargo plane in the Democratic Republic of the Congo that will take them back to Kigali, Rwanda. A mother sits next to her daughter who died on the runway of Mbandaka’s airport after walking more than 1,000 miles through the jungle for seven months. Her other children sit with her. The refugees were scattered all over the jungle when they fled massacres commited by Alliance rebel troops. Photo by Michael Robinson-Chavez, The Boston Globe. sent back by such career correspon- ing independent states, while smaller, der control while making a strong case dents as Bill Touhy, Don Cook, Keys less viable areas remained within the for the cruelty and incompetence of Beech and Henry Mamm, all reporters new Russian Federation. The threat the Russians. In this book we find little who could convey the tragedy of war- that the Muslim Chechens would be- to admire about the Chechens, either, torn countries without being person- come independent threatened who like the Kurds not far to the south ally destroyed by the assignments. Moscow’s control over the rest of the seem to live to fight and appear unable Like the Balkan Peninsula, the Caucasus, stirring President Boris to do what it takes to organize them- Caucasus Mountains shelter tribes in Yeltsin to display his muscle by send- selves into a viable nation. The small, isolated valleys where they re- ing the Russian Army down from the Chechens fought bravely and fiercely live ancient hatreds and wait for op- north. before they were driven from their portunities to wreak revenge on en- Carlotta Gall of the English-language capital, Grozny, and were forced to emies and rivals. Stalin and Beria, killers Moscow Times and Thomas de Waal, make peace and postpone talks about with no historic rivals, came from one who reported for the same paper as independence until 2002. They exist of the larger republics, Georgia. Nearby, well as for The Times of London and now as an autonomous “republic” gov- the people of Chechnya were viewed The Economist, have combined their erned by an unstable, local govern- as fierce and anarchic; in Moscow they reportage into this methodical account ment in an unstable region where west- were regarded as successful and feared of the battle for Chechnya which lasted ern oil interests collide with the regional gangsters. from 1993 to 1997. Like Sudetic’s book, interests of Russia, Turkey and Iran. The Soviet-imposed order in the area their reports emerge from the battle- Despite the volatility of this situa- collapsed with Christian Georgia and field. Unlike the young American, these tion and the possible consequences of Armenia and Muslim Azerbaijan form- two reporters kept their emotions un- this instability in this region, this book

Nieman Reports / Spring 1999 63 Books received little attention in the United trained army led by Tutsis determined While each of these books is well- States. This is perhaps because the book to take control from the genocidal Hutu written and reported, each could have was published initially in England, but regime. The Hutu fighters squatted in been improved by incorporating these also because of the methodical style its the Congo, reconstituted themselves larger contemporary and historic per- authors use in walking us through the into a new army, and made victims of spectives. If readers are going to be events of this war. Also, there seems the true refugees. drawn to these stories, part of their little interest in the Caucasus region by Gourevitch is more of an essayist appetite for learning more about these Americans who are tired of reading than the reporters turned authors who distant conflicts will need to come out and hearing about problems besetting wrote about Bosnia or Chechnya. He of a desire to better understand the the people in what used to be the relishes making historical connections changing dynamics of the post-Cold Soviet Union. to his family’s experience with the Nazi- War era. This is a time in which By contrast, Philip Gourevitch, a re- organized Holocaust, connections that America’s political, military and eco- porter for The New Yorker, has man- I felt appeared strained, and then nomic roles in regional conflicts are aged with his book to garner the atten- reaches afar to punch Thomas Jefferson still seeking clear definition, and these tion of Americans about another region who had “leisure to think and write as books—in fact, news coverage in gen- that they generally ignore: Rwanda and grandly as he did” because of his “unre- eral of such conflicts—can provide im- central Africa. His book is based on six pentant ownership of slaves.” He also portant and valuable insights. trips to this tiny, mountainous, beauti- takes on an easy target in Washington’s Too often, however, a weary Ameri- ful country that held special affection unwillingness to get involved in a small, can public is freed from the need to pay for its former Belgian rulers. The geno- isolated African state where the United attention to such stories by a media, cide unleashed by the majority Hutus States had no compelling interests, a especially television, which have largely against the minority Tutsis in 1994 was place too close to Somalia where the given up on providing comprehensive not well covered by the American me- American participation in an interna- coverage of foreign news. Of course, dia. With few reporters stationed in tional humanitarian operation turned when particular incidents carry im- Africa, the ones that were there were into a political and military disaster. mense shock, such as embassy bomb- distracted by political events in South The American public, and therefore ings, or when American interests have Africa and were late in covering the its government, is not prepared to send been defined by past conflicts or brief, bloody war. its soldiers on dubious missions to present clashes, such as Israel, Iraq and In his book, Gourevitch sets forth faraway lands, particularly if our usual Korea, news coverage is more consis- the official policy in Rwanda that ig- political allies have conflicting inter- tent and better informed. But part of nited this wave of horror and murders. ests, as they often do in Africa. And what it ought to mean to be a journalist “The government had adopted a new Gourevitch can come up with no for- is to confront in a responsible way the policy by which everyone in the Hutu mula that would permit white outsid- decisions about reporting on what the majority group was called upon to kill ers to intervene successfully in black- audience “wants” to know and what it everyone in the Tutsi minority. The ruled countries. Even black-led might need to become better informed government and an astounding num- intervention forces with financial assis- about. The positive reception ber of its subjects imagined that by tance from the West have not been Gourevitch’s book has received from exterminating the Tutsi people they successful in alleviating tensions in such critics, in particular, provides some could make the world a better place, places as Sierra Leone, the Congo or measure of hope that the critical les- and the killing had followed.” Liberia. sons of these distant conflicts that these Gourevitch turns his late arrival to the Rwanda remains a frightful contem- and other journalists are chronicling scene to his and our advantage as he is porary example of officially sponsored will, in time, seep into our national able to locate victims and have them murder and inexcusable fumbling by consciousness. ■ retell their stories in their own words. the United Nations and individual coun- He also tracked down some of the tries. But this failure should have been Murray Seeger, a 1961 Nieman killers, tracing one to Texas. acknowledged within the context of Fellow, is a former foreign corre- Sorting through tribal histories, the long history of the destructive in- spondent, is Washington, D.C. repre- Gourevitch traces these peoples back tervention by Western nations in the sentative of the Committee to Protect to their origins, to a time before the affairs of black African nations. Instead, Journalists and Executive Director of population of central Africa was di- too often when journalists take on the Newspaper Guild Committee on vided arbitrarily by Europeans into writing about these current atrocities the Future of Journalism. colonies that became Rwanda, Burundi what emerges are only glib policy pre- and the Democratic Republic of the scriptions that don’t seem well- Congo under Belgian rule. Some of his grounded in either the geopolitical best reporting recounts the ugly scenes realities of today or the historical roots of refugees who fled west in panic from that were planted decades ago. the invasion from Uganda of a well-

64 Nieman Reports / Spring 1999 Books

What Difference Would It Make If Reporters Knew a War Crime When They Saw One?

This article is excerpted from a paper prepared by Roy Gutman, a correspondent for Newsday, for the International Studies Association conference held in Vienna, Austria in September 1998.

By Roy Gutman

uman rights abuses, war crimes (ICRC) be granted access to Omarska determining a response. and impunity are the stuff of and other camps. Other major govern- Reporters cannot play the role of Hjournalism for the simple rea- ments were slower to respond. judge or jury in a war crimes case, nor son that crime is news. The traditional What role can or should reporters should they advocate policy responses. watchdog function requires media to play in alerting the world to infractions The reporter’s proper role is that of report on disregard for the law, espe- of humanitarian law? Can they put a watchdog: to alert the public to the cially if that is the attitude of a State or spotlight on these violations, if in fact first signs of war crimes, crimes against an institution supported by taxpayer’s they are not certain themselves what humanity, or genocide. Until and un- money. constitute transgressions of humani- less there is an effective International Yet media coverage of international tarian law? And if they did know, would Criminal Court with an active prosecu- or internal conflict is rarely framed in it make a difference in how these sto- tor who has a method, staff and the terms of infractions of the laws of war. ries are reported and, in turn, how necessary access to chase down allega- International humanitarian law is a these events are regarded and treated tions, I am not sure who except the thicket of interconnected assumptions, by the international community? How media can investigate, document and principles, statements and caveats that is a reporter to know a war crime when present the evidence of crimes in real most laypersons find impenetrable. he or she sees it? Too often, what time. Doing this properly and avoiding Would a grasp of human rights and the happens is that journalists observe major errors requires professional Geneva Conventions produce better gross abuse and don’t call it by its real skills, patience, resources and risks that news coverage? Personal experience name, a war crime. What in the past are not always in ample supply in the leads this reporter to think it would. have been called “tragedies” are, in news media. Reporters were among the first to fact, grave breaches of international The 1949 Geneva Conventions, far discover that major governments, far law, but the law is so complicated and from being outdated or overtaken by from upholding humanitarian law, so poorly understood by journalists events, might provide the public a nor- would just as soon walk away from it in that their reporting often falls short. mative guide to what matters in con- the absence of vital or commercial in- The potential impact of improved flict. After all, they represent the les- terests or a carefully trained spotlight. coverage of this issue on public aware- sons learned after the century’s worst Early in August 1992, following my ness is hard to assess in the abstract, conflict; and their content, much of own reports disclosing systematic kill- but in certain circumstances it could be which dates back a good deal further, ing at detention camps in northern substantial. Had the media covered the has a certain logic to it. While the ICRC Bosnia, the stunning television foot- abuses in the Croatia war of 1991 more properly seeks to encourage obser- age by the British ITN network, and the skillfully, the reportage would have vance by citing positive examples, the on-site reporting by Ed Vulliamy of The alerted the world to the true nature of news media can properly put the spot- Guardian, United States President the conflict and prepared it better for light on war crimes. Public grasp of George Bush issued a stern-sounding the explosion of crimes in the 1992- what is at stake in war will be enhanced but evasive statement that nonetheless 1995 Bosnia conflict. And had report- if reporters know which acts are legal reflected a clear grasp that interna- ers provided the legal frame of refer- and which are criminal, particularly in tional humanitarian law had been vio- ence for the systematized maltreatment the era now opening of international lated. He did not denounce crimes they found in the Bosnian Serb con- courts to hear cases of abuse. against humanity, demand the closure centration camps, the widespread and At the end of what may well be of the camps, the freeing of the prison- systematic rape, the destruction of cul- remembered as the decade of ethnic ers, or even an investigation to deter- ture, the attacks on cities and civilians cleansing, at the close of a century of mine whether crimes had occurred. during the Bosnia conflict, then the wars waged against civilians, and at the His only demand was that the Interna- public and major governments might turn of a tumultuous millennium, per- tional Committee of the Red Cross have had a better frame of reference for haps it is time to make the public more

Nieman Reports / Spring 1999 65 Books aware of these same distinctions. Geneva Conventions and crimes against Making the determination whether In an effort to raise awareness of humanity—will be available later this an incident rises to the level of a war international humanitarian law, a group summer. Some examples will be un- crime is unfortunately a task that jour- of reporters and law scholars, with the ambiguous in terms of how they repre- nalist should now consider taking on backing of American University’s Wash- sent violations of this law. Others will given the brutal conflicts they are now ington College of Law and its Depart- be more ambiguous, but in each in- sent to cover. While the process of ment of Communications, have orga- stance a discussion of the applicable learning about what constitutes such nized the “Crimes of War Project.” The law will provide guidance. There will crimes requires time and effort, I think project’s aim is to educate the news also be articles from coverage of nine the value of doing so will be reflected media in the United States and abroad major wars, with reporters taking a in the coverage that results. ■ about humanitarian law. A pocket guide fresh look from the perspective of in- to war crimes—including 60 articles by ternational humanitarian law and, more reporters about grave breaches of the specifically, at war crimes.

Can Business Reporting Become a Positive New Force In Foreign News Coverage?

This is excerpted from a December 18 Nieman seminar in which Orville Schell, Dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at Berkeley, offered his perspective on foreign news coverage.

uestion: Why should the aver- learn to understand it to really have it It’s really interesting what’s happen- age American newspaper be meaningful and to enjoy it. So I find ing because of the marketplace in pub- Qreader care about China? The it quite alarming that there is this com- lishing; that is, after all, a business story second broader question is mon wisdom that nobody wants to with profound political and societal how should American newspapers be hear about foreign news, and that’s implications. So business does present writing about foreign news in a way that.… a way to experiment with writing about that engages readers? During the last I think there is a new way into for- foreign stories and other subjects that 20 years the ways that Americans get eign news stories at this point in his- haven’t been fully explored. In fact, I’m news have changed so much, and tory. That way is through business. But trying to get a chair set up at Berkeley Americans’ interest in it reflects that I must add that this way leaves me of to do precisely this. You know, find change. Can we write about foreign two minds. I mean, now, business is someone who can think about a really countries the same way in 1998 and “the story” and in Asia business news is broad view of business reporting. How 1999 as we did in 1978 and 1979? particularly big—whether it’s economic does business reporting affect human Orville Schell: The conventional miracle or meltdown. Actually, I per- rights? How does it affect culture, reli- media wisdom, as you know, is that sonally don’t find purely business sto- gion? It’s really an interesting subject even though the world is more global- ries that interesting. I’m much more when you start opening the door on it. ized now than ever, these days nobody interested in history, culture, politics, And I think that’s what’s missing in cares about foreign news. And yet still art, things like that. But that’s just my much reporting these days. We end up in some ways, it’s true that people are own bias. However, business report- with a kind of mono-cultural approach presumed not to be interested in world ing presents an opportunity, a chal- to business journalism. We get a affairs. Of course, in another way I lenge, that is to take business as the Bloomberg and Dow Jones view of the think such disinterest is a self-fulfilling central beating heart and then to try world and few people want to look at prophecy. For example, if nobody hears and relate it to other topics—to have it the larger societal effects of it all. After classical music, nobody is going to learn lead into other areas of life. all, business is the animating force in to really appreciate classical music. You I’m not sure that business reporters this fin de siecle world of ours, and it is don’t just turn on Wagner for the first have done that as well as they might or having a profound effect not just on time and say “wow!” But actually, as that people who aren’t business re- commerce and finance, but on every Mark Twain said, “Wagner is not as bad porters know how to tap into the busi- aspect of our lives, from politics and as it sounds.” It just takes acquiring a ness side of the story to get to some- science, to psychology and culture. ■ taste for it. thing larger that might help clarify What I mean to say is that you basi- questions of what’s going on, for in- cally have to become cultivated to some- stance, in literature, art and society. thing like foreign news, you have to

66 Nieman Reports / Spring 1999 Books

The Culture of Secrecy: Can It Be Cracked Open?

Secrecy: The American Experience Daniel Patrick Moynihan Yale University Press. 262 Pages. $22.50.

A Culture of Secrecy: The Government Versus the People’s Right to Know Edited by Athan G. Theoharis University Press of Kansas. 245 Pages. $29.95.

By Athan G. Theoharis

Has unwarranted secrecy caused need- assumptions, the unintentional pro- immoral conduct” of members of Con- less harm to a democratic society and moting of popular belief in conspira- gress. There were also “blue/pink” in the process to the practice of inves- cies, and the allowing of bureaucrats to documents (called this because of the tigative journalism? These two books withhold secret information from presi- color paper these secret memos were answer affirmatively. They share a com- dents and members of Congress even written on), and then “informal” memo- mitment to openness and regard the when such information could have randa for communications about sen- post-Cold War era as an unparalleled ensured a more reasoned decision. The sitive and administrative matters by opportunity to challenge a secrecy sys- Cold War, Moynihan concludes, “be- senior FBI officials. These procedures tem based exclusively on standards queathed to us a vast security system guaranteed that the resultant records imposed by executive orders. The au- that shows no sign of receding” but, he would not be indexed or filed in the thors, nonetheless, offer differing con- argues, “it is time to dismantle govern- FBI’s central records system. This al- ceptions of the nature and scope of our ment secrecy…and to begin building lowed such records to be destroyed nation’s current secrecy problem. Sim- the supports for the era of openness without leaving a trace. ply put, Daniel Patrick Moynihan de- that is already upon us.” To achieve In addition, Hoover maintained at fines the problem as “Can secrets be this, classification and declassification least two secret office files and in- known?” whereas the Athan G. should be based on legislation—not structed his administrative assistant, Theoharis-edited collection reframes on executive orders—and overseen by Helen Gandy, to destroy one of them the issue as “Can secrets ever be the creation of an independent Na- in the event of his death. She did. CIA known?” tional Declassification Center. officials similarly maintained in their For journalists, questions about the Moynihan’s assessment captures the offices records which were not to be secrecy of information—How it is made frustration of most journalists cover- incorporated within the Agency’s offi- secret? How long it is kept secret? And ing national politics and intelligence cial records—“files of convenience or by whom?—are critical to the ability of issues. But it misses two other trou- working files,” “privacy channel cables,” reporters to tell the whole story to a bling aspects of the secrecy problem “shadow files,” “soft files.” In addition, public that more often than not has a highlighted in the Theoharis collec- dating (at least) from the 1960’s, even right to know, if only after the fact. tion: special records procedures to some official CIA files were purpose- Moynihan’s tightly argued book of- ensure the undiscoverable destruction fully destroyed—those pertaining to fers an historical overview of the evolu- of politically sensitive documents and the Agency’s 1953 covert operation to tion and costs of an unprecedented the courts’s role in effectively neutral- overthrow the Mossadegh government commitment to secrecy (dating only izing an opportunity for openness. in Iran, others relating to the Agency’s from World War I). International de- Dating from the 1940’s, FBI and CIA assassination planning and drug test- velopments, and a companion internal officials purposefully sought to make ing programs, and the tapes and tran- security concern about subversion, he certain that their destruction of speci- scripts of CIA Director Richard Helms’s maintains, contributed to the over-clas- fied records could never be traced. FBI telephone and office conversations. sification of information, the rational- Director J. Edgar Hoover required the These record destruction practices ization of security procedures, and the use of “Do Not File” memoranda for were uncovered only in the mid-1970’s creation of bureaucracies committed requests and authorization of “clearly when for the first time Congress inves- to secrecy. He then evaluates the ad- illegal” break-ins, and “summary memo- tigated the authority and covert activi- verse consequences of these practices: randa” for reporting derogatory infor- ties of the intelligence agencies. the precluding of independent critical mation concerning “criminal or cor- Congress’s interest was triggered by evaluations of anachronistic or faulty rupt practices, subversive activities, and the Senate Watergate Committee’s rev-

Nieman Reports / Spring 1999 67 Books elations of how President Nixon had about him, including reports the NSA prietary right and responsibility to de- used secrecy to abuse power, as well as had disseminated to the FBI and CIA. termine whether information gener- a concurrent controversy over the pos- Salisbury’s FOIA suit was not a per- ated in the course of doing the public’s sible destruction of his Oval Office sonal matter but is important for an business should be disclosed and which tapes. Shortly before resigning as Presi- understanding of the relationship be- of their agency’s records should be dent, Nixon made an agreement with tween journalists and the intelligence preserved. It is significant to note that the head of the General Services Ad- community. Given Salisbury’s assign- under current classification restrictions, ministration under which he retained ment as the first U.S. correspondent in records which FBI and CIA officials had exclusive control over his presidential Moscow, and then the controversy sur- purposefully destroyed would not have papers and the right to destroy the rounding his reports from Hanoi chal- been released in the immediate or fore- Oval Office tapes once the criminal lenging the Johnson administration’s seeable future. These officials’ objec- prosecution of White House aides was claims of precision bombing, the ques- tive was not to reduce the risk of harm concluded. Congress responded by en- tion arises: Had the NSA intercepted to the national security should classi- acting the Presidential Recording and Salisbury’s communications with fied information be released. Instead, Materials Preservation Act (PRMPA). Times’s editors in New York and dis- they intended to sanitize the record, to This assigned control of Nixon’s presi- seminated this information to the FBI ensure that controversial and abusive dential papers and the Oval Office tapes and CIA? practices could never be discovered to the National Archives and mandated Another judge ruled that the Na- and never reported in the press. the early release of those tapes pertain- tional Security Council’s (NSC) elec- Congress remains unwilling to re- ing to the former President’s “abuses tronic records of the Reagan Adminis- verse the courts’ deference to execu- of power.” Congress also approved a tration were not releasable under the tive secrecy claims by legislating differ- series of amendments to the 1966 Free- FOIA. The decision held that the NSC ent standards that would give greater dom of Information Act (FOIA) to pro- was a presidential advisory body, not a weight to disclosure than to continu- mote the release of the records of the federal agency, and thus presidents ing secrecy. Such legislation was pro- intelligence agencies (FBI, CIA, and controlled the timing of release of such posed by Senator Moynihan in 1997. National Security Agency, NSA). records subject to the Presidential Instead, in 1998, Congress suspended These legislative initiatives, however, Records Act of 1978. the automatic declassification require- did not achieve the intended goal of Ironically, some of the requested ments of President Clinton’s 1995 ex- creating an “era of openness” nor did NSC records had been created under a ecutive order governing records that they “dismantle government secrecy.” “do not log” procedure devised by NSC are more than 25 years old. That sus- Relying on the FOIA, journalists, activ- officials Oliver North and John pension would require that the more ists and scholars requested specific FBI, Poindexter. Because these records were than a billion pages of such records be CIA and NSA files. When processing not logged in the NSC’s central records reviewed page by page “to prevent the these requests agency officials, by system, they could be safely destroyed, inadvertent release of records contain- broadly interpreting the Act’s provi- and were with the inception of the ing Restricted Data (RD) and Formerly sions regarding exemptions, either Iran-contra investigation. Only North’s Restricted Data (FRD).” heavily redacted or withheld in en- failure to have also destroyed the The course this debate over secrecy tirety the requested files. At the same memory safeguard of the NSC’s com- takes will go a long way toward deter- time, FBI officials drafted in 1975-1977, puter system permitted the reconstruc- mining whether journalists and others and the National Archives approved, tion of some of these records. will gain the kind of access they should plans to destroy all closed-field office Poindexter, in contrast, was even more have to records of public decision-mak- files and a massive headquarters file on thorough. ing. Right now, the public record is not the Sex Deviates program, which sought In ruling on Nixon’s suits, the court being well served by the decisions of a to identify and then purge homosexu- upheld the constitutionality of the few to shield many from “secrets” that als from various jobs. PRMPA but subsequently denied that all of us should know. ■ As the intelligence agencies claimed the National Archives could retain any FOIA exemption, journalists and oth- “personal” material in the Nixon pa- Athan Theoharis is a professor of ers filed lawsuits challenging these pers and tapes. These would have to be history at Marquette University in decisions. Former President Nixon returned to the Nixon estate. And the Milwaukee, Wisconsin, who has went to court to challenge the legality Nixon estate was entitled to financial focused on the FBI in his work. His and then the implementation of the compensation for the “taking” of his books include “Spying on Ameri- PRMPA. In a series of crucial FOIA rul- presidential papers. cans” and “From the Secret Files of J. ings, the courts ruled against those To focus solely on over-classifica- Edgar Hoover.” who challenged the system. One court tion misses a more disturbing aspect of rebuffed on “national security” grounds our secrecy problem. That is what I call journalist Harrison Salisbury’s claim “the culture of secrecy” that underlies demanding the release of NSA records executive officials’ belief in their pro-

68 Nieman Reports / Spring 1999 Books

Race Intrudes on a Newspaperman’s Career

Ted Poston: Pioneering American Journalist Kathleen Hauke University of Georgia Press. 326 Pages. $29.95.

By Joseph Williams

In today’s age of hyper-speed journal- ing the 1940’s and 1950’s. His friends ism, where news cycles change hourly included Thurgood Marshall, Dorothy and consumers can get stories at the West and Henry Lee Moon, an influen- click of a mouse, it’s interesting to note tial member of the NAACP. how little has changed. The best re- Hauke paints a detailed portrait, one porters rely on shoe leather and guile researched during 10 years without and are willing to do what it takes to get any comprehensive sources; Poston left the story. Considering the state of Afri- behind few memoirs or personal pa- can-Americans in the newsroom, how- pers, and The Post restricted Hauke’s ever, the old maxim seems to apply: access to its archives. She managed to The more things change, the more they reassemble Poston’s life through his stay the same. surviving friends, official memos, Though it’s been at least 30 years records and even his divorce papers, since mainstream newspapers were detailing his battles against racism and widely integrated, relatively few blacks his own personal demons. have advanced to upper-level leader- The eighth child of Ephraim and ship in those newsrooms; meanwhile, Molly Poston, Theodore Roosevelt most African-American reporters either Augustus Major Poston was taught at assume or are assigned the task of an early age to uplift the race. His reporting on minority affairs for a read- parents were both educators, and his ership that’s increasingly white. oldest brothers joined Marcus Garvey’s That irony kept recurring as I read United Negro Improvement Associa- During the early 1920’s, as the Com- “Ted Poston: Pioneering American Jour- tion (UNIA). His father and brother munist Party began to recruit blacks nalist,” a biography by Kathleen Hauke, even tried to establish a black paper, seeking equality, Poston joined a cadre an independent scholar in Atlanta. The The Hopkinsville Defender, but it failed, of black artists, writers and intellectu- book chronicles the life and times of wrecking the family finances. als for an all-expenses-paid first-class Poston, The New York Post’s first black At Tennessee Agricultural and In- trip to Russia. Though the project on reporter. Though Lester A. Walton, who dustrial College, Poston was a bright, race relations ultimately failed, Poston briefly worked for The New York World energetic student whose resourceful- and Moon, then a fellow writer for The around the turn of the century, broke ness and drive showed up early. Lack- Amsterdam News, produced a wildly the color line, Poston’s life and career ing the funds even for a proper colle- successful English-language daily. was defined by a paradox common to giate wardrobe, he paid his tuition as a Poston’s career path had been estab- black journalists in the modern age: railroad porter. Though hard, demean- lished. His best work transcended race, but ing work, Poston saw the country and Back in New York, Poston and Moon was inextricably bound and ultimately developed a love of newspapers. At rejoined The News, but labor strife and limited by it. layovers, he read every paper he could, uncertain management made it a short Poston’s remarkable life is fascinat- particularly influential black periodi- stay. Poston, newly married to a young ing in historical context alone. He was cals like The Baltimore Afro-American Harlem woman who was enthralled by a union activist, chronicled the Harlem and The Chicago Defender. his personality, emerged as an up-and- Renaissance, and was a “Black Cabi- By the time he neared the end of coming talent while covering the net” advisor to Franklin and Eleanor college, Poston knew he wanted to be Scottsboro trial in Alabama—an assign- Roosevelt. He covered the trial of the a newsman. He moved to New York to ment in which his experience as a por- Scottsboro Boys in Alabama, wrote a help his brothers produce The Cru- ter came in handy. He became active in pioneering series examining race rela- sader, the UNIA journal, and moon- the city’s guild newspaper movement, tions in New York and Dixie, and was lighted for Harlem’s Amsterdam News a relationship that helped lead the fi- part of the New York social scene dur- as a freelance reporter and columnist. nancially shaky News to fire him.

Nieman Reports / Spring 1999 69 Books

During the Depression, Poston and Byrd, Poston’s career took off during and lifelong smoker, Poston developed Moon both did brief stints with the The Post’s golden era. arteriosclerosis in the mid-1960’s and Federal Writers’ Project, a New Deal But racism overshadowed his suc- was largely viewed as a relic by the new program, until it was shut down in cess. Up for a Pulitzer for his work generation of black reporters hired by 1936. When The New York Times re- covering the trial of four black boys The Post. The beginning of the end jected them, Poston found work at The accused of raping a white housewife in came when he was sent to cover the New York Post, long a bastion of liber- Florida, a jealous colleague sabotaged assassination of Martin Luther King: alism. But he had to prove himself first Poston’s nomination. Still, Hauke Poston got drunk in a Memphis bar and to City Editor Walter Lister. Hauke writes, Poston “enticed the mainstream missed deadline as black America writes that Lister, “certain that he would white ethnic readership to learn about burned. Within a few years he had never hire a Negro, agreed to pay Ted black culture, and of course through retired, and his third wife had divorced 30 cents an inch if he could find ‘one his work, blacks could read about them- him. By 1974, he was dead. story that’s an exclusive that any other selves in the context of the broad Ameri- Given the complexity of her subject reporter doesn’t have.’” That day, can spectrum. Explaining Negroes pal- and a lack of resources, Hauke does an Poston had his scoop: A white process atably to whites wearied him but, as a extraordinary job detailing Poston’s server, trapped by an angry mob in colleague says, ‘it was his race and he life—proven by more than 70 pages of Harlem, was rescued by a policeman wanted to do that.’” footnotes and a 59-page bibliography near a subway turnstile. The man was Throughout the 1940’s up to the and index. Unfortunately, her academic headed to deliver papers on legendary early 1960’s, Poston’s career flourished, writing style is somewhat dry and lacks radio missionary Father Divine. including close coverage of the inte- narrative; the effect is like a collage Despite the cold shoulder from other gration of Little Rock’s Central High instead of a painting. The footnotes are reporters and some sources, Poston School and the Brown vs. Board of also somewhat distracting. But overall, parlayed his uptown connections into Education ruling. But it stalled when Hauke puts Poston’s life in perspective several Post scoops and exclusives. He Alvin Davis—Poston’s former drinking and makes the ironies for today’s black briefly left the paper for a stint in FDR’s and poker buddy—was appointed Man- journalists even clearer. ■ “Black Cabinet,” a coalition of African- aging Editor at age 35. Davis wanted a American thinkers who advised the new kind of coverage for the old-school Joseph Williams, a 1996 Nieman President on racial matters. But Poston, liberal Post, and Poston’s style didn’t Fellow, is City Editor of The Boston a dyed-in-the-wool newsman, returned fit in with his vision. Globe. to The Post when FDR, his “spiritual Poston’s career rallied when Davis father,” died. Back in New York with was dismissed after a series of mis- his second wife, the socialite Marie takes, but not for long. A hard drinker

A Desire to Tell People What They Ought to Know

Salant, CBS, and The Battle for the Soul of American Journalism: The Memoirs of Richard S. Salant Compiled and Edited by Susan and Bill Buzenberg Eastview Press. 331 Pages. $27. By Ray Scherer

Dick Salant, the CBS corporate lawyer Gordon Manning, Vice President for whom Frank Stanton named president News, said, “My God, he’s writing them of his news division in 1961, was so faster than I can read them.” wedded to his job that he watched the By 1999 standards Salant was unbe- Cronkite evening news in his limou- lievably high-minded and old-fash- sine every night while being driven ioned. He drew as sharp a line as he home. Once he arrived there, he played could between news and entertain- back the ABC and NBC versions of the ment. For news shows he ruled against evening news and made notes of what music and opening fanfare. He was a he liked and disliked. The next morn- world-class grammarian with an over- ing he peppered his deputies with riding concern for content. Pictures memos, comments, complaints and were of secondary importance. admonitions—so many of them that

70 Nieman Reports / Spring 1999 Books

He bridled at any tendency to aim at power, for airtime, and visibility.” He suaded to become Vice-Chairman of the emotions rather than the mind. came close to firing Dan Schorr for a NBC. The atmosphere there proved Salant subscribed to the Reithian BBC number of reasons, but Schorr beat uncongenial, and he soon decided that philosophy that it was radio and CBS to the punch by resigning. Salant NBC was not a place where he could be television’s stern duty to tell people concedes it “was a notable black mark useful. In 1983, still afraid to retire, he what they ought to know. As he put it on his watch” to hire Sally Quinn as co- became President of the National News to one critic, “I feel strongly that it is a anchor of the morning news. He felt Council. His old network, CBS, sup- journalist’s function to tell people what that Quinn “could not make the adjust- ported the Council, but other big play- they ought to know, and not take pub- ment to television,” and CBS let her go. ers, notably The New York Times, felt lic opinion surveys to find out what is When CBS got into grievous trouble that the Council threatened the pa- most interesting, titillating, and amus- with Congress over their new docu- pers’ independence. When the Coun- ing in the way of news. It has always mentary “The Selling of the Pentagon” cil folded in 1984 Salant ruefully con- been the function of editors and jour- and demanded the outtakes, Salant cluded that he had “retired five years nalists to choose those news stories tucked the reels of film and other ma- too late.” which are most important, and the fact terial in the trunk of his car to protect That did not deter him from con- that many people may not be initially them from subpoena. tinuing as an apostle for better broad- interested in them cannot deter us. I These anecdotes are a random sam- cast journalism. He took to the lun- am afraid that is elitist, but it is the true pling of many inside revelations in this cheon circuit to decry the intrusion of profession of journalism.” memoir which is not strictly a memoir, soft news and disappearance of seri- Salant spent much of his 16 years as but an edited compilation of 3000 pages ous-issue documentaries. On February head of CBS defending the troops. of Salant’s recollections, memories and 16, 1993 Salant gave a talk in Fairfield, When various critics jumped on Walter speeches. Before he died Salant told Connecticut. His theme was the blur- Cronkite for “editorializing” in 1968 his family, “I can’t do it,” and stopped ring of news and entertainment. He for declaring that the only way out of work on what he called “the world’s had begun to answer questions when, the Vietnam quagmire was to negoti- longest unfinished book on news.” suddenly, he slumped to the floor with ate, Salant bent his rules and declared Fortunately for the historical record of a fatal heart attack. that “there are some extraordinary oc- broadcast journalism, the Buzenbergs Salant is gone and so, increasingly, casions when our senior correspon- have managed to boil down Salant’s 40 is the straightforward, no-nonsense dents should, on the basis of personal pounds of memory to a trim 300, often style of reporting news on the air which surveys and observations, be given per- fascinating, pages. he exemplified. The proliferation of mission to state conclusions.” His legacy, as illuminated in this magazine shows has inexorably When Dan Rather’s removal from book, is large. Salant played a major changed the focus of the news divi- the White House beat to be one of the role in expanding the evening news to sions. Network news viewing is steadily lead correspondents in “CBS Reports” half an hour. He shepherded many going down. Every year brings smaller was seen by some as a demotion, Salant other news programs, such as “60 Min- audiences. Ownership changes bring said, somewhat extravagantly, that he utes” and “Calendar.” His 16 years at with them an erosion in standards. had told Dan that any time he wanted the helm of CBS spanned cosmic news Foreign news and Washington cover- to go back to the White House, he events—Watergate, the Civil Rights age is shrinking. could do so. “As a matter of fact, as far Movement, the assassination of Presi- The editors of this book write that as I am concerned, I would be de- dent Kennedy, space exploration. Each Richard Salant’s life in broadcast jour- lighted if he went back as President of of these was seminal reportage in an nalism has come to symbolize the the United States.” era when TV news came of age. profession’s highest ideals. “Some day,” He claimed to be “heartbroken” His most notable contribution was they conclude, “in a less profit-and- when the gruff and acerbic Hughes setting high standards and keeping the ratings-driven era, his enlightened blue- Rudd came a cropper on the “CBS conscience of broadcast news. News- print for broadcast journalism will again Morning News.” Salant said he “loved” men who reported to him have no point the way for others who know that Howard K. Smith, but had to fire him hesitancy in proclaiming him “the best the First Amendment is not just a li- for violating CBS policy against editori- boss we ever had.” He took as much cense to make money but that it comes alizing. Elsewhere in his book, Salant pride in maintaining the integrity of with enormous responsibility to serve admits to a major mistake in bringing the news as he did in restoring the the public.” the egoistic David Schoenbrun home Cronkite show to the top after the Let us all embrace this hope, but I from Paris to head the CBS Washington ascendancy of Huntley-Brinkley. wouldn’t bet the farm on it. ■ bureau. Salant’s conclusion: “Manage- Salant was promised a consultancy ment—the bureau chief’s job—and after he took mandatory retirement Ray Scherer was White House Corre- reporting should not be combined in a from CBS at the age of 65 in 1979, but spondent for NBC News during the single person, particularly when the it never developed. He hated retire- Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy and person has an insatiable appetite for ment and, somewhat warily, was per- Johnson years.

Nieman Reports / Spring 1999 71 Books

Golf Offers a Window on Our Changing World

Preferred Lies and Other Tales: Skimming the Cream of a Life in Sports Jack Whitaker Simon and Schuster. 272 Pages. $24.

By Tom Witosky

There is a movie scene that haunts just acknowledges almost too eagerly. about every serious sportswriter I know. Like any sportswriter or broadcaster In “North Dallas Forty,” actor Mac Davis, who has spent so many years on the who portrays a grizzled veteran quar- road, Whitaker has compiled a marvel- terback, explains to wide receiver Nick ous collection of stories about ath- Nolte why breaking an arm during a letes, broadcasters and other sports professional football game actually felt figures from the worlds of football, good. baseball, track, the Olympics, but most “It made me feel like I was doing of all, golf. Many will hit readers’ pal- something important,” Davis says, with ates like a dry white wine, but there are chilling effect. a couple of boilermakers in the mix. It is the sportswriter’s curse to know My favorite is about golfer Bob that same feeling. Rosberg, who worked with Whitaker How could something so unimpor- on many golf telecasts, and a fan of the tant in the whole scheme of things in late Tony Lema, who died in an air- life become such a serious center of plane crash in 1966 just after becoming attention in American society? a star on the professional golfers tour. Jack Whitaker—in a memoir from Rosberg and Lema battled in a playoff more than 40 years of sports broadcast- in the 1963 Orange County Open at a ing from major sports venues for CBS time when Lema was about to leave the and ABC—does an admirable job of tour because of poor play. On the first trying to answer this question. But as playoff hole, Lema hooked his tee-shot with many of Whitaker’s simple-but- into the trees, but found his ball barely eloquent commentaries, it takes some in bounds. Lema went on to defeat time to absorb the message. Rosberg. of a golf course Lucas had played often. “Sports cannot end wars, erase rac- Thirty years later, a Lema fan found Upon further investigation for a televi- ism, or end poverty, but properly Rosberg at an ABC-telecast tournament sion piece, Whitaker learned that the guided, they can be a more positive and reminded him of the hooked shot. story wasn’t quite true. Lucas had tried force in these areas than they are now. The fan reported to Rosberg that he, to land on the course, but missed the To help with that guidance seems a too, was on that first playoff hole, had fairway and ended up walking away worthwhile challenge for a new gen- found Lema’s ball out of bounds, and from the plane after it landed in a eration of sportscasters and sportswrit- had kicked it back into play, paving the nearby field. ers. All they must remember is that it’s way for Lema to win. As he was helped from the plane, an adventure, not brain surgery on Rosberg, whose sardonic sense of Lucas reportedly said: “Never could hit children,” he concludes. humor delighted Whitaker over the that fairway with a driver, don’t know And for Whitaker, whose sports tele- years, replied: “If you hadn’t done that, why I thought I could hit it with an casting career from the 1960’s to the he’d [Lema] still be alive.” airplane.” 1990’s spanned the greatest explosion Another favorite anecdote is about One warning: If you aren’t a golfer, in sports interest in the country’s his- Laddie Lucas, a top English amateur you’re likely to find the book more tory, it’s been an adventure that af- golfer, who became an RAF fighter pi- than boring. Whitaker’s love affair with forded him the best of life—lots of lot during World War II. Whitaker had golf is almost overwhelming even for travel, lots of famous friends, lots of been told a story about Lucas crash- those of us who are avid about what he money and lots of golf—something he landing his shot-up plane on a fairway

72 Nieman Reports / Spring 1999 Books calls “the most movable feast of all.” There are abundant stories about Jack Nicklaus, Tom Watson and Arnold Books About Journalism Palmer, just to list a few of the names Whitaker casually drops. The American Newspaper Columnist. Sam G. Riley. Praeger. 272 Whitaker is unabashed and unapolo- Pages. $65. getic about this. “A journalist’s life is a happier one if the people he writes and Calling Elections: The History of Horse-Race Journalism. Thomas talks about are the great ones, whether B. Littlewood. University of Notre Dame Press. 202 Pages. $30. they are politicians, statesmen, enter- tainers or sports figures. My genera- The Emergent Independent Press in Benin and Cote D’Ivoire: tion was fortunate to have great sub- From Voice of the State to Advocate of Democracy. W. Joseph jects,” he writes. Campbell. Praeger. 138 Pages. $55. Unlike most sportswriters and broad- casters whose jobs are covering high Newspapers of Record in a Digital Age: From Hot Type to Hot school sports, college athletics and Link. Shannon E. Martin and Kathleen A. Hansen. Praeger. 159 Pages. maybe a professional team or two, $55. Whitaker spent his career covering leg- ends of American sport. But that also Photojournalism and Foreign Policy: Icons of Outrage in Inter- raises a nagging question about national Crises. David D. Perlmutter. Praeger. 192 Pages. $55 hard- sportswriting and sports broadcasting cover, $17.95 paperback. during this period: Just where were the hard-hitting reporters who cared less The Popular Press, 1833-1865. William E. Huntzicker. Greenwood about having lunch or a drink with a Press. 210 Pages. $65. legend than revealing the truth about them and the business behind the Reporting Live. Lesley Stahl. Simon & Schuster. 444 Pages. $26. game? It’s not fair to criticize Whitaker or Reporting Vietnam: Media and Military at War. William M. his contemporaries for turning a blind Hammond. University Press of Kansas. 362 Pages. $34.95. eye occasionally to the seamier side of athletics. That is what happened for Reporting Vietnam Part II: American Journalism 1969-1975. years until one of Whitaker’s contem- The Library of America. 857 Pages. $35. poraries, Howard Cosell, discovered that sports fans have as big an appetite for scandal as for sanctimony. sense is that the squalor was always newspaper and television executives At one point, Whitaker calls today’s there amid the splendor. to challenge similar restrictions in their professional sports “sadly squalid” But give Whitaker credit: He also own country clubs. “Many of us thought while remembering that most athletes accepts responsibility. we could change these restrictive poli- and coaches are good citizens who give He remembers the 1990 Shoal Creek cies by working from within, but we back to their fans and communities. My controversy over racial restrictions at were so thrilled to have been accepted many of the country’s wealthiest coun- into this elite world that we didn’t try clubs. Shoal Creek’s failure to have make waves and we didn’t make Correction any African-American members only trouble. We were not completely si- In the Winter 1998 issue we came to light when a local newspaper lent, but our efforts to change the sta- published “What Numbers Can reporter asked Hall Thompson, an Ala- tus quo were weak and ineffectual,” he Tell Us,” a box of statistical bama businessman, about it. Thomp- writes. information that accompanied son responded that the club would not That kind of honesty is rare even in an article on Media and Juve- be pressured into accepting “the today’s sports world. But that appar- nile Violence. The information blacks.” The ensuing tempest lasted ently is the kind of guy Whitaker is and included in this box was com- about a week until several major PGA why his book makes for an interesting piled by Jason Zeidenberg at sponsors threatened to withdraw sup- read, perhaps even for someone who the Justice Policy Institute. We port for the 1990 PGA Tournament to has never played the game of golf. ■ did not credit his work, as we be played at Shoal Creek. The club intended to do, and for that revised its policy. Tom Witosky, a 1992 Nieman Fel- oversight we apologize. Whitaker praises the change, but low, is Sports-Projects Reporter for also acknowledges the failure of many The Des Moines Register.

Nieman Reports / Spring 1999 73 NiemanNieman Notes Notes Compiled by Lois Fiore

The Nieman Network Works in Wondrous Ways

By Chris Bowman

early four years have passed dent newspaper in the seaport capital independent daily, The Ghanaian since my class toasted many of Accra and guiding light of West Afri- Chronicle. Coomson took me under Nfarewells at the elegant Harvard can journalism. Blay-Amihere, a 1991 his wing the week he was set to be tried Faculty Club. Our Curator, Bill Kovach, Nieman Fellow, passed his copy of on a criminal charge of “publishing had the last word: “You are part of a Nieman Reports to Wiredu. The timing false news with the intent of injuring community now that stretches around was exquisite. the reputation of the state.” He already the world, that’s there all the time, all I happened to be mulling over an had been detained 10 days in a night- day, every day, with your interests and announcement of the inaugural Sena- mare of a prison—“I wouldn’t wish it your hopes and your values in mind. tor John Heinz Fellowship, which com- on my worst enemies”—and, if con- And you’ve got something you can lean bines the training of journalists with victed, faced up to 10 years there. on the rest of your life. You’ve got reporting on international environmen- Yet, with all this and 32 libel suits something you can call on, you can tal issues. The International Center for around his neck, Coomson gleefully enlist in your own help and your own Journalists in Washington, D.C., posts ushered me around Accra, a mostly support when nobody else is around.” one U.S. journalist per year for up to disease-ridden jumble of 1.9 million. Today, as I play back my videotape three months in a developing country He introduced me to several of the of that night, Kovach’s spontaneous of the fellow’s choice. The program nation’s top editors, politicians and speech seems as prophetic as it was runs on a grant from The Teresa and H. businessmen and insisted on my stay- profound. I realized the full import of John Heinz III Foundation and is named ing as a guest in his home. But Coomson his message last summer in Africa, in honor of the late senator from Penn- and I were at a loss to explain my where I truly needed something to sylvania. sustained bouts of high anxiety, which lean on. The Nieman connection played “How about I just show up and do soon prompted me to flee to the some- a serendipitous role in my overseas the training myself?” Luckily, the fel- what tamer Zimbabwe. venture. lowship judges liked this plan, and off Enter Nieman number three, Remer A few years ago, I contributed to a I went in mid-June to the sweltering Tyson, Class of ’67. The balmy, south- Nieman Reports issue on reviving envi- edge of the equator. I had my laptop, ern African country, where tobacco and ronmental coverage. A year later, I got anti-malaria pills, guidebook—and ab- cotton are king, remind Tyson of his this response from Ghana, of all places: solutely no experience overseas. That’s native Georgia. He and his writer-wife, “I am Clement Wiredu, a communica- where Nieman Fellow number two Virginia Knight, want to make the capi- tions programme officer with PACIPE stepped in. Blay-Amihere was out of tal city of Harare their permanent home. [a French acronym for a West African the country, so I looked up Nana Kofi He recently retired from The Detroit environmentalist organization]. An ac- Coomson from the Class of ’94. Free Press after a 12-year stint of cover- tive component of this programme is Coomson is a business whiz, a pas- ing war, famine and other harrowing building the capacity of journalists in sionate and compassionate investiga- African stories for the Knight-Ridder environmental reporting. I would be tive journalist and a genius in human chain. Along the way, he became known pleased if you would help by providing relations, with friend and foe alike. for his courage and class. some resources and materials.” Every day he rides a razor’s edge be- Tyson broke my family and me into Wiredu originally turned to Kabral tween freedom and incarceration as Africa as he has many a foreign journal- Blay-Amihere, Editor of The Indepen- Editor-in-Chief of the country’s other ist over the years. He introduced us to

74 Nieman Reports / Spring 1999 Nieman Notes the beauty of Zimbabwe, beginning —1952— —1970— with the ancient bushmen cave draw- ings on the outskirts of Harare. And he John M. Harrison died on February Larry L. King’s 13th book, “A was the first to figure out the source of 14 at the Oaknoll Heath Center in Iowa Writer’s Life in Letters: Reflections In a my mysterious trauma—my malaria City following a brief illness. He was Bloodshot Eye,” will be published in prevention medicine, Lariam. “Drove 84. October by Texas Christian University me batty once,” Tyson said. “I’d sooner Harrison and his father published Press. Some 300 of King’s personal get malaria.” On Tyson’s recommenda- The Oakland Acron from 1934-47. From letters spanning 50 years have been tion, I switched to a more benign pro- 1947-58 he was Associate Editor of The selected for inclusion from among al- phylactic, and within a couple weeks I Toledo (Ohio) Blade. He published most 20,000 on deposit in The South- was well on my way to a successful student publications and was a jour- western Writers Collection at South- fellowship. nalism instructor at the University of west Texas State University in San Thanks Remer. Thanks Kofi. Thanks Iowa from 1958-61. In 1961 he joined Marcos. In November King will again Kabral. As they say, once a Nieman, the faculty of Pennsylvania State Uni- emcee the Annual Texas Book Festival always a Nieman. ■ versity, retiring as Professor Emeritus in Austin at the invitation of Texas First of Journalism and American Studies in Lady Laura Bush, who is Honorary Chris Bowman, a 1995 Nieman 1978. Chairperson. Fellow, is an environmental reporter Harrison wrote a number of books, at The Sacramento Bee. He can be including “The Nickel Machine.” —1971— reached at [email protected]. —1965— Hyuck-In Lew died on January 29, after a five-month struggle with lym- Year 2000 Reunion Donald M. Kendall died on Febru- phoma. He was buried in his home- ary 8 after suffering a heart attack while town of Andong, Kyungsang Province, Plans Advancing driving near his home in suburban in the southeast of Korea. He is sur- Silver Spring, Maryland. He was 70. vived by his wife, Ang Hur Lew, two A year from now—Saturday, April Kendall was a farm writer for The sons, a daughter and a son-in-law. 29, 2000—we will be sitting in the Associated Press for 23 years before his ballroom of the Hyatt Hotel in retirement in 1991. He covered the —1972— Cambridge getting an update on Agriculture Department and wrote six our Harvard education. columns a week from 1968 until his John Carroll was named Editor of On that day Harvard professors retirement. the Year by the National Press Founda- will lay out for the hundreds of “I want to be a farm writer,” Kendall tion. Carroll, who is Senior Vice Presi- Nieman Fellows attending the Year wrote then-AP President Wes Gallagher dent and Editor of The Baltimore (Md.) 2000 Reunion a vision of the world just before he was given that beat. Sun, received the award at the Wash- and its critical issues as we near “Agriculture is too vital to be viewed ington, D.C. Hilton Hotel on February the close of the millennium. That entirely from the barnyard, too impor- 24. The Sun recently won back-to-back night there will be a reception and tant to be entrusted entirely to the Pulitzer Prizes—in 1997 for feature dinner at the John F. Kennedy bureaucrats.” writing and in 1998 for investigative Library. Kendall began his journalism career reporting. Carroll, who joined The Sun The reunion begins Friday, the at The Hutchison (Kan.) News, where as a reporter in 1966, has been Editor night before, with a block party at he covered agriculture issues and the since 1991. Lippmann House. It will end the State Legislature for 11 years. next day, Sunday, with brunch. In 1977 Kendall won the J.S. Russell —1974— Plans are advancing. Rooms Memorial Award, the top award of the have been blocked out for Nieman Newspaper Farm Editors of America Shirley Christian writes: “For the Fellows at the Hyatt, the Charles (now known as the National Associa- past year this recovering foreign corre- and the Sheraton Commander tion of Agricultural Journalists). He spondent has been working to create a hotels. Bed and breakfast estab- was president of the group in 1979. publications division for a biomedical lishments are being contacted. By In addition to his wife, Lou, survi- research institute being built in Kansas fall we will have room rates so vors include a son, three daughters City, Missouri. Offbeat though it may reservations can be made. and six grandchildren. sound, it is very exciting to be in on the Get out your New England maps development phase of an enterprise and start planning for a spring that aims to become the best of its kind vacation tied to the Year 2000 Re- in the world. It is being financed by two union. ■ wonderful local billionaires, Virginia

Nieman Reports / Spring 1999 75 Nieman Notes and Jim Stowers, who have already created a generous endowment for the Lew Clapp, Nieman Technology Advisor, Dies institute and plan to leave it their en- tire estate when they die. “How I got here really began five Lewis C. Clapp died on December tor. He was a medical data consult- years ago when I resigned from The 26 in Boca Raton Community Hos- ant to the Joint Center for Radiation New York Times (after 17 years in Latin pital in Florida after an operation Therapy at the Harvard Medical America with The Times, The Miami for a ruptured appendix. He was 61. School and Dana Farber Cancer In- Herald and The Associated Press). I Clapp, a pioneer in computer stitute, where he developed a grant didn’t want to live abroad any longer technology, spent the last eight years management and tracking system. and didn’t want to return to New York helping guide and instruct Nieman He was a consultant on computer or Washington but did want to start my Fellows on the mysteries of the com- information systems for the Museum own book publishing house. So I came puter. Armed with the newest tech- School of the Boston Museum of home to Kansas City and tried it. I nological gadgets, from beepers to Fine Arts and a member of the Board loved being a publisher, but eventually cellular phones to miniature cam- of Visitors. He was a Founder and decided I couldn’t hemorrhage any eras, he enthusiastically supported Publisher of Toy Review Magazine, a more money. anyone interested in stepping into contributing science writer for In- “After considering various job possi- what he believed to be the future of ternational Science and Technology bilities that would have taken me to journalism. With unlimited gener- magazine, and a co-editor of a spe- New York or Washington I accepted osity, he would rush to help a cial Sunday supplement on com- the offer of the persuasive Mr. Stowers flummoxed Nieman Fellow or staff puter information technology in The and am glad that I did. Like the Marga- member restore a crashed com- New York Times. ret O’Brien character in ‘Meet Me in St. puter, find the right dentist, or orga- Clapp received a bachelor’s de- Louis,’ I’m lucky to have been born in nize a trip to Fenway Park. gree in physics and computer sci- my favorite city. I still write occasional Clapp’s interests were wide- ence from the Massachusetts Insti- pieces for The Times from this area reaching. Part of his life’s work was tute of Technology and studied and, after all my exotic datelines, I find spent with Timeshare Inc., the first Japanese language, technology and that nothing gives me more pleasure independent national computer government history at Harvard Uni- than telling the nation and the world time-sharing service, which he co- versity. about the wonders of the midlands. founded and for which he served as He is survived by his wife, Judith, Getting Dodge City and Wyatt Earp Executive Vice President and Direc- his mother and three daughters. ■ reprinted in The International Herald- Tribune is more fun than living on airplanes!”

—1981— start experimentally in 2000 in and Ikeda can be reached at his E-mail around three major cities including address, [email protected] Masayuki Ikeda has changed jobs Tokyo, Nagoya and Osaka. Nationwide within the Japan Broadcasting Corpo- commercial TV networks here will also —1986— ration. Ikeda writes: “Last June, I left follow suit. my work at the news desk where I was “Digitalization is a heavily technical Gustavo Gorriti’s book, “The Shin- a chief director for news and other matter. Technology is, I confess, some- ing Path: A History of the Millenarian programs for overseas service both in thing I have avoided since I became a War in Peru,” has been republished by radio and TV. I became a senior media news reporter for NHK more than two the University of North Carolina Press. analyst of NHK’s Broadcasting & Cul- decades ago. (But I’ve found you can The 1999 edition includes a new intro- ture Research Institute. My present as- talk about mathematics even when you duction by Gorriti, who began cover- signment is to cover the development can’t explain why minus times minus ing the Shining Path while writing for of the media in the United States. I will be plus.) The problem is that digi- the Peruvian weekly, Caretas. The book visited the United States two times late talization is so technical and dream- examines the period between the last year to meet people in the indus- scattering that people seem to be mes- rebels’ first attack in 1980 and the try—three Nieman alumni were among merized and are not serious in talking military intervention ordered by then- them—to learn about the digitaliza- about the disadvantageous side of digi- President Fernando Belaunde in 1982. tion of broadcasting. The purpose of talization for daily life, society and cul- Gorriti, who lives in Panama, is Associ- my research work is to contribute to ture. I myself don’t know what kind of ate Editor of La Prensa. NHK’s efforts to digitalize its satellite disadvantage we are going to have, but and terrestrial broadcasting. Digitali- I really want to see where this process zation of terrestrial broadcasting will takes us.”

76 Nieman Reports / Spring 1999 Nieman Notes

Yvonne van der Heijden writes: Press-Enterprise. He had been Manag- ing for Diane Sawyer and Sam “After eight years working as a foreign ing Editor. Donaldson. On Feb. 16 I joined ‘Date- correspondent in China, I’ve decided line NBC,’ also as producer. My new to leave Peking and look for new chal- —1991— number is 212-664-2598. E-mail is lenges elsewhere. It hasn’t been an [email protected]. I’m still in New easy decision. I am still fascinated by Tim Giago sold Indian Country To- York, but will return to Dallas full-time China and the Chinese. To cover for day to the Oneida Nation of New York by year’s end. John (who’s still at The almost a decade the transformation state. The publication was born in 1981 Dallas Morning News) and I look for- this country and its people are going when Giago, who had grown frustrated ward to finally living in the same zip through has been a most interesting with coverage of Indians in the main- code! We’ve got an extra bedroom, so and enriching experience. stream press, founded a weekly paper y’all come visit.” “Yet the breathtaking pollution and named The Lakota Times and based in the urge to feel for a while what it is like South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Reservation. —1996— to live and work in a more sophisti- When the newspaper became a na- cated country all contributed to my tional publication, the name was Tom Ashbrook’s Internet start-up decision to say good-bye to the place changed. Giago says that he wanted to company, BuildingBlocks Interactive, and the people which have been very sell the paper to an Indian entity that “has been handsomely funded and is good to me. I guess I’ll be back in China would keep its staff intact and guaran- cranking up at cheek-flattening speed.” in the future. But first I’ll go for a two- tee its journalistic freedom, which the BuildingBlocks publishes HomePort- month holiday traveling in Southeast Oneida Nation has done. folio (www.homeportfolio.com), the Asia. In early March I’ll plan to be back leading Internet destination for pre- in Holland to start job hunting.” —1993— mium home design products. HomePortfolio shows an independent, —1987— Heidi Evans’s new book, “How to editorial selection of the world’s best Hide Money From Your Husband…and home design products, coupled with Marites Vitug and Criselda Yabes Other Time-Honored Ways to Build a electronic brochures from paying had a book they co-wrote, “Jalan-Jalan: Nest Egg: The Best Kept Secret of Mar- manufacturers. Ashbrook’s memoir of A Journey Through Eaga,” published riage,” a mischievous and practical look his personal transition from the old to by Anvil Publishing. (Jalan-Jalan is a at the war between the sexes over the new economy will be published by Bahasa word meaning “leisurely money, will be published by Simon & Houghton Mifflin early next year. stroll.”) The book is an account of their Schuster in September. The book grew travels through the recently defined out of an article Evans wrote at The David Marcus reports: “After nearly East Asean Growth Area, a region com- Wall Street Journal about how for gen- 18 years in daily journalism, I decided prised of fringe areas of Malaysia, Indo- erations women everywhere have been to take the plunge into newsmagazines. nesia and the Philippines, and is both quietly putting money aside. Women I joined U.S. News & World Report, travelogue and social commentary. still make only 76 cents to a man’s where I am covering higher educa- Vitug writes for the Philippine Cen- dollar and need to be prepared for the tion—a beat that will often take me to ter for Investigative Journalism, The best and worst that can happen in life Harvard and other campuses. I wel- Manila Times, Newsweek and World and in marriage. come story ideas from those of you Paper. Her book, “Power From the Evans is currently working at who have gone into academia. Forest: The Politics of Logging,” won Newsday, covering issues of aging in “To answer the question everyone the National Book Award in 1994. In America. asks: I left The Boston Globe because I 1991, Vitug received the Courage in wanted to get away from must-do dai- Journalism Award from the Washing- Olive Talley writes: “It’s been an- lies and try more enterprise stories. ton-based International Women’s Me- other year of big changes for me. Good I’m still a huge fan of the paper and of dia Foundation for her reporting. ones. I married my long-time partner, Boston. John Davidson, in May 1998. After a “We’ll stay in the suburbs of Wash- —1988— traditional church wedding, we had a ington, D.C. Work telephone: 202-955- lovely party at an historic bed and break- 2376. E-mail: [email protected]. Eugene Robinson has been named fast in Waxahachie, near our home “Thanks to Bill Kovach for the career Assistant Managing Editor/Style for The south of Dallas. Of course, horses counseling.” Washington Post. He had been Foreign played a role. We rode in a carriage Editor for the past five years. pulled by two draft mares, with their Jacques Rivard writes about his new two-week old colts trotting alongside, job in Vancouver, British Columbia: “I —1990— and then took guests on rides around moved from Montreal to Vancouver to town. It was fun. become the National Correspondent George Rodrigue is now President “On the work front, I left ABC this of the Societe Radio-Canada (French of News and Executive Editor of the year after nearly four years of produc- Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Nieman Reports / Spring 1999 77 Nieman Notes network) for national TV news. I will still very busy here, but I cannot imag- go on with the environmental cover- ine my life differently.” —1998— age I’ve done for 17 years, although the scope of my coverage will be wider and The ongoing saga of Mary Phillip Martin is the new Race Rela- will embrace political and economic Schmich’s mock graduation address tions Correspondent for National Pub- matters as well. My territory extends to the class of 1997 was outlined in the lic Radio’s Cultural Desk. Martin has from Alaska to Mexico and because the January 31 issue of The New York Times. worked as Senior Producer for Public West Coast is the site of many environ- In her original column, which appeared Radio International’s “The World,” as a mental concerns such as fisheries, in The Chicago Tribune, Schmich urged commentator for WGBH-TV and NPR’s whale hunting and forestry mining, her audience to floss, wear sunscreen, “Morning Edition,” and for Oxfam most of my reporting will still revolve and get plenty of calcium, among other America. He will be based in Boston. around the ‘Green Beat.’ I now have a things. The speech quickly circulated fresh series of subjects dealing with in E-mails and on the Internet, but Jim Meek is the 1999 winner of the nature and its losses, as developed somewhere along the way its author Hyman Solomon Award for Excellence countries are talking more about the was mistakenly identified as Kurt in Public Policy Journalism. Meek, a impact of human activities, not only on Vonnegut. Most recently, the speech columnist for The Halifax (Nova Scotia) climate change, but on species that was turned into a song that became a Herald, received the award for the body disappear or are biophysically affected hit in Australia and is currently the of work he did in 1998. The Solomon by them. most requested tune at KNRK-FM in award, which recognizes outstanding “Other than that, I still represent Portland, Oregon. coverage and analysis of public policy Canada on the Board of the Society of issues, is sponsored by the Public Policy Environmental Journalists, a U.S.-based Joe Williams is now City Editor of Forum, a group comprised of 115 Ca- association of reporters covering the The Boston Globe. He had been Assis- nadian organizations dedicated to im- environment. It is 1100 members tant City Editor. Williams previously proving government. strong, mainly American, but with in- worked at The Miami Herald. (See his Meek, who left The Herald at the creasing membership from Canada and review of a book about journalist Ted end of February, is now freelancing. ■ Mexico, which makes for lots of travel- Poston on page 69.) ing in the U.S.…As you can see, I am

Expanded Web Site Offers New Services to Niemans

An expanded Nieman Foundation site has gone on line. The revised public site offers ex- cerpts from seminars, photos of all the Nieman classes, and a growing catalog of full editions of Nieman Reports (except for the current issue) with a search capability. The continuing dis- cussion of watchdog journalism will soon extend to the Internet. A private, password-protected Fel- lows’ Forum will go on line soon. Niemans will be able to search direc- tory listings and link to E-mail ad- dresses. A listing update form will be posted. A bulletin board will facilitate exchanges among fellows. Take a look at the new Web site and tell us what we can do to improve it. Send us your Internet address to ob- tain a password necessary to access the Forum and join in the discussions. The address of the new Nieman Web site is the same as the old: http://www.nieman.harvard.edu. ■

78 Nieman Reports / Spring 1999 Nieman Notes End Note

A Photographer Unites Generations With His Camera

hese photographs are from an of time as this community grows up, support, until recently the only reli- ongoing project that I began 16 grows older, changes, or as often hap- able source of meager income, is now Tyears ago, a visual chronicle of a pens in West Athens, stays the same. threatened as well. town—West Athens, Maine—and its Life in West Athens is defined by its West Athens is a town of relations— people. Returning there year after year, isolation and unrelenting poverty, yet five generations of aunts and cousins, the children I first photographed are it is lived with energy and ingenuity, grandparents and in-laws—all living now having children, and cycles of affection and laughter. In this hub of on ancestral land. Survival is accompa- family, community and, inescapably it rural poverty, there are few opportuni- nied by a fierce attachment to family, seems, poverty perpetuate themselves. ties or escapes. Here, there is no gas land and tradition. While those who My project is intended to be an histori- station, no country store, no church, live in other places often mourn the cal record and also a way of paying no schoolhouse, no police station, or loss of community, here it is woven homage to people who have given me even a sign proclaiming it exists. Me- into the fabric of daily life. ■ this opportunity to portray the passage nial jobs are scarce, and government ––By Steven Rubin, Nieman Fellow 1999

Donny’s Girl Photo by Steven Rubin

Nieman Reports / Spring 1999 79 Nieman Notes

Grandma Rosie’s kitchen.

Christopher and his great-uncle, “Six-Pack” Sammy. Photos by Steven Rubin

80 Nieman Reports / Spring 1999 Nieman Notes

“…to promote and elevate the standards of journalism”

—Agnes Wahl Nieman, the benefactor of the Nieman Foundation.

Vol. 53 No. 1 NIEMAN REPORTS Spring 1999 THE NIEMAN FOUNDATION FOR JOURNALISM AT HARVARD UNIVERSITY

Publisher Bill Kovach Editor Melissa Ludtke Assistant Editor Lois Fiore Editorial Assistant Adam Reilly Design Editor Deborah Smiley Business Manager Gina Camara

Nieman Reports (USPS #430-650) is published Please address all subscription correspondence to in March, June, September and December One Francis Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02138-2098 by the Nieman Foundation at Harvard University, and change of address information to One Francis Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02138-2098. P.O. Box 4951, Manchester, NH 03108. ISSN Number 0028-9817 Telephone: (617) 495-2237 Internet Address (Business): Second-class postage paid [email protected] at Boston, Massachusetts, and additional entries. Internet Address (Editorial): [email protected] POSTMASTER: Send address changes to WWW address: Nieman Reports, http://www.Nieman.Harvard.edu P.O. Box 4951, Manchester, NH 03108. Copyright © 1999 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Subcription $20 a year, $35 for two years; add $10 per year for foreign airmail. Single copies $5. Back copies are available from the Nieman office.

Nieman Reports / Spring 1999 81