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.