The new issue of Nieman Reports is now online, and they wanted to bring some highlights to your attention, including their cover story, “Rewriting J-School,” in which Jon Marcus explores how journalism educators are responding to disruptive innovation in higher education by trying to bring the classroom closer to the newsroom.

In “Talk to the Hand,”Jenni Bergal chronicles how public health reporters are pushing back against the Obama administration’s clampdown on access and information.

Turkey has recently faced its own kind of news blackout, but 140journos, a citizen-sustained social media news agency, is changing that, as co-founder Engin Onder explains in “A Sense of Exhilaration and Possibility.”

Can comics enhance reader engagement for important stories? Judge for yourself by reading Symbolia co-founder Erin Polgreen’s essay “The Core of Story” and our graphic novel treatment of Ukraine’s collaborative investigative effort, “Chasing Paper with YanukovychLeaks.”

Finally, check out Nieman Journalism Lab director Joshua Benton’s take on how smartphones are challenging newsrooms and Margot Adler’s explanation of why there are so many vampires on Wall Street.

Rewriting J-School

Journalism education has come to the same ominous inflection point that journalism itself has reached—and the stakes are just as high. Universities are shutting down or proposing to shut down journalism schools, or merging them with other departments. Enrollment is falling—dramatically, for graduate programs—while it’s rising at newer institutions and those with an emphasis on digital media. Yet there are hopeful signs as educators and editors are joining forces to accomplish what neither can do so easily on their own—give students real-world reporting experiences and provide daily and in-depth news coverage.

> via nieman.harvard.edu