Nieman Reports
Fall 2007 Issue
Nieman Notes
Class Notes
1967 1968
1976 1981
1985 1986
1988 1989
1993 1995
1998 2001
2003 2005
2006
2008
Sidebars
—1967—
• Dana Bullen, a foreign editor of The Washington Star, died June 25th of cancer in his home in Alexandria, Virginia. He was 75.
Bullen worked at the Star for 21 years, only leaving when it folded in 1981. During that time he covered Senate and Supreme Court affairs and the 1968 presidential campaign, served as foreign editor, and wrote columns on constitutional law. In 1981 he became executive director of the World Press Freedom Committee (WPFC) and served as its representative at the United Nations and several intergovernmental conferences. He continued his work for press freedom through his speeches, the production of several books, organizing international meetings on press freedom issues, and leading studies. After he retired in 1996 he continued to work with WPFC as a senior adviser for another 10 years, guiding the organization through emerging issues of digital freedom.
“Wherever men believe that a free press means a free people, Dana Bullen will be remembered,” said Harold W. Andersen, chairman emeritus of WPFC. “On any list of dedicated, articulate, persistent and effective defenders of freedom of the press across the world for the past several decades, [he] ranks among the very best.”
In 2000, Bullen received the Inter American Press Association’s Chapultepec Grand Prize for his work in press freedom and was twice awarded the American Bar Association’s Silver Gavel Award for his coverage of the judicial system. His wife, Joyce, asks that contributions in his honor be made to the WPFC.
• Anthony Day died on September 2nd of complications from emphysema at a hospice in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He was 74.
Day was born into a newspaper family. His father, Price Day, was a foreign correspondent for The (Baltimore) Sun and won a Pulitzer Prize for international reporting in 1949. His three brothers also became journalists, and Day met his wife, Lynn, while both were reporters at The Evening Bulletin of Philadelphia in the 1960’s.
From 1971 to 1989 Day was editorial page editor of the Los Angeles Times, hired by then Publisher Otis Chandler to bring the paper into the top tier of newspapers and “to add credibility to an editorial page long viewed as reactionary and protective of local business interests,” according to the obituary by Mike McIntire of The New York Times. Before Chandler’s death in 2006, McIntire writes, Chandler said, “I recruited Tony as the right man to remake the Times’ editorial page, and I always felt it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The most important thing was that Tony completely shared my vision of what the Times’ editorial page had to be—independent and nonpartisan, free of the Republican Party or any party. … He was brave and erudite and believed, like I did, that the paper had to be a voice for all the people of Los Angeles and California.”
One of the first bold statements Day made was in an editorial he wrote about the Vietnam War. His experience as a reporter in Vietnam convinced him that troops should be pulled from that war but, as Jon Thurber writes in the Los Angeles Times, “Such an idea was controversial … because the paper had supported the war and President Nixon had been a longtime favorite of the Chandler family and the Times.” But Day’s editorial, “Get Out of Vietnam NOW,” appeared in the newspaper on June 7, 1970, and began, “The time has come for the United States to leave Vietnam, to leave it swiftly, wholly, and without equivocation.” Over the years, according to Thurber, Day “helped push the paper to adopt new, more balanced editorial stances, an unswerving support for constitutional rights and independent positions on a number of controversial issues, including gun control and capital punishment.”
In 1989, a year after Chandler broke his official ties with the paper, Day was taken off of his position on the editorial page and became senior correspondent, covering ideas and innovation. Although he retired in the mid-1990’s, Day continued to write for the Book Review section of the paper, and his final essay, a review of “The Far Reaches” by Homer Hickam, appearing on August 1st.
Day is survived by his wife, Lynn, and a son, John. A daughter, Julie, died in 1989.
• Philip Meyer will be honored in March 2008 with a symposium entitled “Raising the Ante: The Internet’s Impact on Journalism Education.” Meyer, Knight Chair in Journalism at the University of North Carolina’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication, has announced plans to retire next year. Meyer’s successor will have a new title, Knight Chair in Journalism and Digital Media Economics, reflecting the program’s adaptation to the digital era. Meyer is author of
“The Vanishing Newspaper,” a book that details the weakening of traditional news models in the emerging digital age.
“[Meyer’s book] is must reading for every editor and publisher,” said Jean Folkerts, dean of the school. “We expect our new Knight Chair to achieve a similar impact—to generate and communicate ideas and data that help mass communication professionals understand where the field is headed and how to better serve the public while making a profit.”
• William F. Woo, who died in 2006, was known for writing letters and essays to his students at Stanford University, where he was Lorry I. Lokey Visiting Professor of Professional Journalism. That material has now been compiled into a book, “Letters from the Editor: Lessons on Journalism and Life,” published by the University of Missouri Press. The informal letters and essays express his thoughts and reflections on journalism culled from his 40 years as a newspaperman. Woo’s Nieman classmate, Philip Meyer, edited the material and wrote the introduction. Royalties from the book will go towards Asian American Journalists Association internships.
—1968—
Jerome Aumente completed two programs in the spring for journalists visiting the United States from the Middle East and from East Asian countries with significant Islamic populations. They are the latest in a series of eight programs for Arab and Islamic journalists he has done in cooperation with Meridian International Center, Washington, D.C.
Aumente also published a new book in the spring, “From Ink on Paper to the Internet: Past Challenges and Future Transformations for New Jersey’s Newspapers,” which looks at the history of the newspapers and the challenges they face to reinvent themselves in the digital age of the Internet. The book is a centerpiece timed for the New Jersey Press Association’s (NJPA) 150th anniversary in 2007. NJPA is the oldest continually operating press association in the United States.
In the fall, Aumente will help conduct special panels and a symposium on the future of journalism education and media transformations in the digital age at the Rutgers University School of Communication, Information and Library Studies where he is distinguished professor emeritus and special counselor to the dean.
—1976—
Yoichi Funabashi is now editor in chief of Asahi Shimbun in Tokyo, Japan. With a circulation of 12 million, it is the largest newspaper in that country. The official announcement of his appointment states that “In Asahi Shimbun’s 130-year history, Dr. Funabashi is the third Editor in Chief.” The first held the position from 1936 to 1943 and the second from 1971 to 1977. Funabashi was a reporter for Asahi Shimbun in Beijing and Washington, D.C. before being named American general bureau chief. Funabashi has also been a visiting fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and a Distinguished Guest Scholar at the Brookings Institution.
—1981—
Doug Marlette died in a car accident near Holly Springs, Mississippi on July 10th. He was 57. Marlette, an editorial cartoonist and creator of the comic strip Kudzu, worked for the Tulsa World. He received the Pulitzer Prize in 1988 for his cartoons while working for the Atlanta Constitution and the Charlotte Observer.
The outpouring of grief from those who knew Marlette and his work was quick: “This is just a devastating loss. He could do it all and do it well,” said novelist and friend Pat Conroy. When he worked at Newsday, “most days, by the time we finished our morning meeting, he would have his cartoons done, beautifully drawn, on great big sheets of paper in India ink,” said Carol Richards, former deputy editor of the editorial pages, quoted in an obituary by Michael Amon and Carl MacGowan in Newsday.com. And James Klurfeld, Newsday’s editorial page editor, said, “He gave us a real emotional wallop. Day in and day out, he was always entertaining. He was always acerbic.”
During his career, Marlette’s cartoons drew strong emotional reactions from his readers. The most controversial one was titled, “What Would Mohammed Drive?” that showed a Ryder truck fitted with a bomb and driven by a Muslim man. Marlette made the cartoon in 2002 while with the Tallahassee Democrat. Thousands of e-mails arrived when the cartoon was published, many of them death threats.
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Read Doug Marlette's article in Nieman Reports Summer 2006
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In an article he wrote for salon.com and reprinted in the Summer 2006 issue of Nieman Reports, Marlette wrote about “the incendiary role of the cartoonist.” He said, “The best political cartoons … are always created in the spirit of the Prague Spring and the Velvet Revolution. They question authority, challenge the status quo, and are inevitably accused of ‘Disturbing the Peace,’ borrowing the title of Václav Havel’s 1990 book. If the editorial cartoons are doing their job, efforts will be made to suppress them.”
Marlette is the author of a number of volumes of his cartoons and two novels, “The Bridge” (HarperCollins) and “Magic Time” (Sarah Crichton Books/Farrar, Straus and Giroux). His comic strip was adapted into a musical, “Kudzu, A Southern Musical,” produced at Duke University and at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C.
He is survived by his wife, Melinda, and son, Jackson.
—1985—
Ed Chen has been elected president of the White House Correspondents Association for 2009-2010. Chen is senior White House correspondent for Bloomberg News and will be covering the 2008 presidential campaign.
—1986—
Geneva Overholser has been chosen to lead the board of directors for The Center for Public Integrity, the center announced in June. Overholser, who has served on the board for the past two years, holds the Curtis B. Hurley Chair in Public Affairs Reporting for the Missouri School of Journalism in its Washington, D.C. bureau.
—1988—
Eileen McNamara is one of five recipients of the 2007 Yankee Quill Award. This annual award, which is a recognition of efforts to improve journalism in New England, is presented by the Academy of New England Journalists through the New England Society of Newspaper Editors. McNamara was cited as “an advocate for the highest standards of ethics in the newsroom, with a passion to correct social injustice and provide a voice to the voiceless.” McNamara, a long-time columnist at The Boston Globe, is now a professor of journalism at Brandeis University. She received the 1997 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary for the columns she wrote for the Globe.
—1989—
Joseph Thloloe has been appointed the new Press Ombudsman for South Africa and will head the Press Council of South Africa, the institution replacing what was known as the Press Founding Bodies Committee. Thloloe is a former editor in chief of SABC TV news and etv news and was recipient of the 1982 Louis Lyons Award for Conscience and Integrity in Journalism. Thloloe was initially banned from reporting in South Africa in January 1981, after 18 years as a labor reporter. During that time he worked for The World, a Johannesburg newspaper banned in 1977; for The Post, also in Johannesburg, which was closed under threat of banning in 1980, and The Sowetan, which replaced The Post. Thloloe was a founder and first president of the Union of Black Journalists, an organization banned by the government in 1977.
According to an article on allafrica.com, the new Press Council of South Africa’s 12-member Appeal Panel includes six public representatives, “something that represents a unique feature in the history of South African media’s administrative affairs.” The full council consists of 24 members. “The key issue for me,” said Thloloe, “is that it’s designed to uphold the highest standards in journalism.”
—1993—
Dori Maynard received $15,000 in the latest Knight News Challenge for a proposed blog on creating and maintaining diversity in digital media. Maynard was one of several individuals and organizations awarded money by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation for “innovative ideas using digital experiments to transform community news.” Maynard is president and CEO of the Robert C. Maynard Institute for Journalism Education and previously directed the institute’s History project, which continues to preserve and protect the work of journalists of color written in the 1960’s and 1970’s. In her current role, she also works on the Fault Lines Project, which looks at diversity through the prisms of race, class, gender, generation and geography. That project will give an initial structure to her blog as she looks at the ever-evolving world of the new media.
—1995—
Lou Ureneck has a new book out, “Backcast: Fatherhood, Fly-Fishing, and a River Journey through the Heart of Alaska,” published by St. Martin’s Press. The book is an account of a trip Ureneck took with his son Adam, after Ureneck and his wife divorced. It was to be a way to reconnect with his son, to regain his trust. In an excerpt from “Backcast,” Ureneck writes that the trip was an attempt to “settle some of the trouble between Adam and me. It would be good, I thought, for us to go fishing together one last time. In the woods and on the river, maybe we would regain something of our old selves before he went off to college and on to the rest of his life. Looking back, I have to admit the trip was a little desperate. I had been willing to take the risk. My life was in a ditch: I was broke from lawyers, therapists and alimony payments and fearful that my son’s anger was hardening into life-long permanence. I wanted to pull him back into my life. I feared losing him. Alaska was my answer. What I had failed to appreciate, of course, was Adam’s view of the expedition. For him, the trip meant spending 10 days with his discredited father in a small raft and an even smaller tent. It was not where he had wanted to be, not now, not with me, and not in the rain. The trip would take us through 110 miles of rugged Alaska, some of it dangerous and all of it, to us anyway, uncharted. I had no inkling of what lay ahead: fickle early fall weather, the mystery of the river, and unseen obstacles that already were silently forming themselves in opposition to my plans.”
Ureneck is chairman of the journalism department at Boston University and former deputy managing editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer.
—1998 and 2001—
David Turnley, ’98, and Peter Turnley, ’01, have a new book of photographs out this fall, “McClellan Street,” published by Indiana University Press. McClellan Street is in Fort Wayne, Indiana, the Turnley’s hometown. They spent one year, 1973, documenting the people and life on the three blocks long street, and the photographs from that year became their first jointly published book. Photographs from the book will be in an exhibition at the Agathe Gaillard Gallery in Paris starting on October 25th and at the Leica Gallery in New York City in February 2008.
—2003—
Kevin Cullen is now a metro columnist at The Boston Globe. Cullen started at the Globe in 1985 and has been a police reporter, street reporter, European correspondent covering Ireland and the war in Kosovo, a member of the Globe’s Spotlight team and, most recently, a projects reporter. He also was a part of the investigative team that received a Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of the sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church. In the Globe’s announcement of his appointment, Cullen said, “From the time I began working as a street reporter my dream job was to be a metro columnist for the newspaper I grew up reading.”
Susan Smith Richardson is now a senior writer/communications officer for the MacArthur Foundation in Chicago. She had been the public education and urban affairs editor at the Chicago Tribune. In her new job, Susan works with program staff to develop publications about the foundation’s work.
—2005—
Louise Kiernan is in a new position as senior editor overseeing staff writing development at the Chicago Tribune. Kiernan, who has won a Pulitzer Prize as a reporter and been an editor at the newspaper, will serve in a variety of new roles. She will be a writing coach, as well as an occasional projects editor. She will be a journalistic mentor for reporters, whether they cover news or write features, and will work closely with editors in each department to “foster excellent writing in every section of the newspaper,” according to a Tribune memo announcing her October 1st appointment. Every so often her byline will still appear as she engages in special reporting projects.
—2006—
Takashi Oshima graduated in September with a master’s in Public Administration from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He will be moving to New York City to work for Fujisankei Communications International, an overseas affiliated company of Japanese Broadcasting Fuji TV.
—2008—
Dean Miller, executive editor of The Post Register in Idaho Falls, has won an award for an article he wrote for Nieman Reports. His article, “A Local Newspaper Endures a Stormy
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Read Dean Miller's Nieman Reports article
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Backlash,” appeared in the Summer 2006 issue of the magazine in which journalists wrote “On the Subject of Courage.” In June, Miller traveled to New York City to attend the Mirror Awards competition ceremony, and there he received the Mirror Award for Best Coverage of Breaking Industry News presented by the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University. The Mirror Awards competition, which took place for the first time this year, honors excellence in media industry reporting.
Lead note: Eliza Griswold
End note: Eli Reed
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