Earlier this month, the U.S. State Department denied a visa to a foreign journalist selected for a yearlong Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University. Hollman Morris, a well-known Colombian investigative reporter and documentary producer, was rebuffed on perplexing grounds. The State Department, in its lone comment on the case, said Morris was denied due to a Patriot Act clause that bars entry into the U.S. by anyone who has engaged in loosely defined “terrorist activities.” The Nieman Foundation, which has never had a fellow refused entry before, was shocked. So were a host of human ... Read More
Big Voice in Climate Debate Silenced
July 20, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
Stephen Schneider, a professor at Stanford and the founder and editor of the journal Climatic Change, died early this morning of an apparent heart attack. He was 65. Schneider likely did more than any American scientist other than James Hansen to bring climate change, and the risks associated with it, into the public consciousness (and that of Miller-McCune's readers. "Schneider ... was a vocal advocate for confronting man-made global warming," noted the Columbia Journalism Review. "He earned the respect of many journalists for his honest and evenhanded explanations of the underlying ... Read More
Don’t Mistake the Messenger for the News Media
June 23, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
The Federal Trade Commission has been working for the past year on a set of theoretical policy interventions that would — to use the FTC's own ambitious language — foster the "reinvention of journalism." This month, the commission released 35 pages of ideas in a discussion paper that ranges from the plausible (boost funding for PBS) to the dubious (rejigger copyright law to help newspapers fight off "parasitic aggregators"). The FTC is merely throwing ideas at the wall, the report stresses, not setting government policy. But all of the ideas flow from the same fundamental premise, ... Read More
Knowledge-Based Journalism Is Not an Oxymoron
April 14, 2010 • By • 4 Comments
Early in my career, I attended a daylong court hearing that focused on a court challenge, pursued by large retailers in a major American city, to a so-called "blue law" that kept most stores closed on Sundays. The lawsuit was big news. This city was largely conservative and fairly religious, and the retailers were normally aligned with the right-leaning establishment. All the same, the retailers wanted to make money on the Lord's Day, politics be darned. The case was God v. Mammon, but with a twist, and so it was catnip to the news media. The run-up to the hearing included weeks of news ... Read More
Watchdog 2.0
April 6, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
Since yesterday morning, a disturbing and an unusual video has been making the rounds on YouTube. It shows gun camera footage of a strike by two U.S. Apache helicopters on a group of pedestrians in Baghdad, including two Reuters reporters, the soldiers mistook for insurgents. The footage is remarkably clear, and it's accompanied by audio transcript of the soldiers' comments during the attack and in its aftermath. The video, which is titled Collateral Murder, is particularly disturbing because the attack appears to be unprovoked, although it may have been preceded by gunfire on the ground ... Read More
Quality Doesn’t Ensure Success for ‘Best New Magazines’
March 17, 2010 • By • 1 Comment
Since 1986, the Library Journal has contributed an authoritative annual compilation of the "Best New Magazines of the Year." Recent publications lauded include Lapham's Quarterly , Monocle, BBC Knowledge, World Affairs and, yes, Miller-McCune. Singled out for their overall high-quality, forward-looking ethos and excellent writing and editing, these fledgling magazines had the honorable distinction of getting their first, tentative steps right. New research, conducted by The College of Saint Rose librarian Steve Black (author of the Journal's 2007 and 2008 "Best New Magazines of the Year" ... Read More
The New York Times and a Mistaken Infant Mortality Trend
February 18, 2010 • By • 2 Comments
Anecdotes and stories have long been a dominant means of conveying information and establishing principles, especially moral and religious ones. In a science-oriented society that has entered the information age, the public appetite for empirical data about every aspect of life has emerged as a complementary and sometimes competing way of understanding the world and, particularly, governmental decisions. But if policy-relevant data are often widely available, the capacity to effectively analyze and fully comprehend that data is more limited. As presented in the news media, anecdotes and ... Read More
Going ‘Glocal’
February 16, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
No, that wasn't a typo — glocalization is a real word, and it's one you may want to know before jumping into the "Jihad vs. McWorld" fray. A little background: For many scholars and activists, globalization is a dirty word, signifying a homogenizing force that spreads American values like consumption and individualism to every corner of the globe. Others contend that while globalization has certainly facilitated the spread of people, information and technology, it also has inspired people to passionately preserve their local cultures and identities, as is evident in, say, the rapidly ... Read More
The Age of Affirmation
January 21, 2010 • By • 3 Comments
When you turn on the evening news, are you actually hoping to learn something? A new study suggests that viewers worldwide turn to particular broadcasters to affirm — rather than inform — their opinions. It's a notion familiar to those dismayed by the paths blazed by cable news networks Fox and MSNBC — although the study finds one (perhaps unlikely) network may actually foster greater intellectual openness. The study in the December issue of Media, War & Conflict by Shawn Powers, a fellow at the USC Center on Public Diplomacy, and Mohammed el-Nawawy, an assistant professor in ... Read More
The Nine of 2009
January 1, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
When I’m awake, I recoil from two forms of journalism: the simple-minded list that is the staple of service-oriented magazines (“25 Ways to Please Your Man While Reading This Brain-Dead Glossy!”) and the anniversary story. My aversion probably has something to do with having worked, early in my career, for editors who thought stories about the 30-year celebration of any event, no matter how trivial, could be made riveting through use of the bulleted list. The story about the best of this, that or the other from the preceding 12 months is, of course, a list-anniversary combination that ... Read More
