From the editor
“It seems to me that the labor field will be of prime importance because the industrial society in which we live is so complex; it has so many bottlenecks; there are so many keys at every point which may lead to disaster that the mechanism in the machinery has to be understood.”
This quote comes not from our recent story on why the labor beat is resurgent, but from remarks made by pioneering labor reporter Louis Stark published in the January 1952 issue of Nieman Reports. Stark was right about the importance of covering labor, then and now. Steven Greenhouse’s piece for us shows just how complex labor issues have become — from the impact of Covid-19 and the #MeToo movement on the workplace to the work-from-home revolution and the Great Resignation — and how important it is for the machinery of labor to be understood.
 Nieman Reports turned 75 in February. The premiere issue appeared in February 1947, and our Winter 2022 print issue appeared two weeks ago. A lot has changed in journalism since Nieman Reports was founded as a quarterly print magazine by a group of Nieman alumni, but our mission as they originally defined it has not: “It has no pattern, formula or policy except to seek to serve the purpose of the Nieman Foundation ‘to promote standards of journalism in America.’”
That mission has been extended beyond America, of course. With Russian President Vladimir Putin’s barbaric invasion of Ukraine and the threat to the country’s free press it brings, Nieman Reports continues to highlight efforts to create independent, sustainable news outlets in places ruled by or emerging from authoritarian regimes, including in Central Europe, Hong Kong, Venezuela, India, Kashmir, Lebanon, Morocco — and Russia itself. Later this week we’ll have stories on the challenges facing independent Ukrainian journalists and their colleagues in other post-Soviet states. In this piece, columnist Issac Bailey argues that coverage of refugees from this or any war should not be framed around the color their skin.
To mark our birthday, we will be looking back at how journalism — and our coverage of it — has changed over the past 75 years. We will be pairing articles from our archives, like Louis Stark’s assessment of the labor beat, with more recent coverage of the same issues, like Steven Greenhouse’s piece on covering the workplace.
In the summer of 1979, Nieman Reports published a special issue on women and journalism, featuring reflections from Mary Ellen Leary and Charlotte FitzHenry, the first two female Niemans (class of 1946), a piece on groundbreaking investigative reporter Nelly Bly, and accounts of the experience of female reporters covering sports. More recently, Nieman Reports published two cover packages on female newsroom leadership, Where Are the Women? in 2014 and Where Are the Mothers? in 2017.
In the Spring 1956 issue, Jet reporter and 1951 Nieman fellow Simeon Booker’s account of the Emmett Till trial related how Black and white reporters worked together to cover the effort to find three key witnesses to Till’s horrific murder. In the summer of 2020, after George Floyd’s horrific murder, Nieman Reports published a collection of pieces detailing how newsrooms are fundamentally rethinking how stories are covered — and by whom.
Nieman Reports didn’t always get things right. That first 1947 cover story, “What’s Wrong with the Newspaper Reader,” is marred by sexist language and offensive descriptions of India’s post-war struggle for independence from Great Britain. We hope our then-and-now story pairings show, though, how we can do, have done, and will continue to do better.
So, over the next 12 months or so, check out #NiemanReports75 on Twitter (@NiemanReports and @niemanfdn) and Instagram (@niemanfoundation) for selections from 75 years of Nieman Reports. We’ve kicked things off with a selection of images from the Summer 1983 issue by photojournalist and 1983 Nieman Fellow Eli Reed, who last year won the I.F. Stone Medal for Journalistic Independence. If you have a Nieman Reports story you’d like to highlight, let us know by dropping us a line at [email protected]. We’d love to hear from you.
Sincerely,
James Geary
Editor, Nieman Reports
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