From Nieman Reports | Joining digital forces to strengthen local investigative reporting
SHOWCASE
‘Our goal is to build online tools that the people can easily use to enhance their ability as watchdogs—whether they are citizens or journalists.’ (From Nieman Reports)

The 3rd annual award | Craig McCoy of the Inquirer wins the 2010 I.F. Stone Medal
SHOWCASE
The reporter has exposed injustice and corruption in Philadelphia for almost three decades; he is said to be persistent, able to penetrate the ‘official fog,’ and imbued with a strong sense of civic right and wrong. And all in all, he is said 'to bring to mind I.F. Stone.'

| The Nieman Foundation names its 2011 Fellows
SHOWCASE
Curator notes ‘extraordinarily diverse backgrounds and interests' as 25 American and international journalists are selected.

A low point | Institutional anemia cripples congressional oversight
SHOWCASE
Reformer Danielle Brian looks back on her 20 years of pushing for more government accountability and concludes that the U.S. Congress has forgotten its role, and as a result, congressional oversight has never been worse.

From Nieman Storyboard | ‘I want to thank you for writing about what happened to my son’
SHOWCASE
Washington Post editor David Finkel is the recipient of the 2010 J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize for “The Good Soldiers,” his firsthand account of a U.S. Army battalion’s activities in Iraq in 2007 and 2008. Here are excerpts from a piece on Finkel and an interview with him by Andrea Pitzer, editor of the Nieman Foundation’s Storyboard.

Q&A | An interview with the winner of the Pulitzer grand prize
SHOWCASE
“You don’t have to be at the New York Times or the Washington Post or the Wall Street Journal to do important work,” says Daniel Gilbert, the young, newly celebrated reporter on a small paper in Southwest Virginia. Gilbert’s work uncovered callousness, red tape and corporate neglect (to put it mildly) that was keeping natural gas royalties, often sorely needed, from going to thousands of people in Appalachia.

Embedded with killers | (Un) Covering the Death Squads in El Salvador
SHOWCASE
On the 30th anniversary of the brutal assassination of Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero, a veteran reporter looks back at some extraordinary and daring close-in coverage that was spurred by personal anger at the murder of the priest.

A conversation with Brian Storm | A different approach to storytelling
SHOWCASE
The new issue of Nieman Reports is devoted to visual journalism in the Internet Age, with a look into stories like the one behind this 'Marlboro Marine.'

Bases Everywhere | Digging in for the long haul in Afghanistan
SHOWCASE
Nick Turse answers questions about his recent finding that there are nearly 400 U.S. and coalition military bases in Afghanistan, what that says about our occupation and our military strategy, and the indirect and direct costs to the American taxpayers. It's a big story most Americans know nothing about.

A journalistic golden age | A paean to the late James Goddard, and to Martin Agronsky as well
SHOWCASE
Morton Mintz recalls getting candid answers from Goddard, then FDA Commissioner, on Agronsky’s ‘Face the Nation’ in the 1960s, a time when – believe it or not – some Sunday morning talk shows cared about, reported, and made news.


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Martin Lobel
It’s time to do more than just say the economy is the No. 1 issue
If voters are to go into the midterm elections with any understanding at all, the press needs to get away from he-said, she-said reporting and look into the positions that candidates and the two parties are taking. Martin Lobel offers some vital questions.

William Claiborne
What a broken Senate looks like from far away...and why it matters
Our correspondent in Australia has ideas on how to improve things a little. But he’s not optimistic that anyone on Capitol Hill will be interested.

Steven Greenhut
How severe is the public employee pension problem across the U.S.? (Hint: Is a $3 trillion debt severe?)
Columnist and author Steven Greenhut looks at the ongoing pension issue, including abuses of it, and deals with some of the key questions.

Watchdog Blog
Herb Strentz
Des Moines Fair Coverage, Part 2
Cleaning up in the wake of the 2010 Iowa State Fair will be daunting this year. In addition to the mess left by nearly 1 million visitors and thousands of farm animals, we have a continuing saga of news coverage that told of possible racial assaults and then, in Saturday Night Live fashion, appears [...]

Herb Strentz
On ‘Beat Whitey Night’ in Des Moines
(Editor’s note: The incidents described here have become part of a developing story, as this Google link shows.) The Des Moines Register’s reluctance to identify criminal suspects or victims by race has turned into an outright refusal to do so. The closing night of the Iowa State Fair was marked by an observance not exactly on the [...]

Barry Sussman
Justice Department Shows Its Mettle, Indicts Clemens
I got this note from a friend and colleague a little while after Roger Clemens was indicted by a federal grand jury on Aug. 19th: “And meanwhile, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, CIA officials and others who lied to Congress in sworn testimony about Iraq go free. If we can ‘look forward, not backward’ on torture, perjury, [...]

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(Nieman Watchdog)

Telecoms charging more to do nothing
It's getting more expensive to have an unlisted phone number. What's the logic behind that?
(Center for Media and Democracy)

Prosecute those leaks
The Obama administration has indicted another alleged leaker, this time for reportedly passing along to Fox News an intelligence assessment that North Korea was likely to respond to U.N. sanctions by conducting another nuclear test.
(Secrecy News/Federation of American Scientists)

A broad array of massive financial crimes
As PRWatch.org shows, court-imposed settlements have only skimmed the surface of big banks' wrongdoing in the financial crisis.
(Center for Media and Democracy)

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