Nieman Foundation for Journalism
Encyclopedia
The Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University is the primary journalism institution at Harvard. It was founded in 1938 as the result of a $1 million bequest by Agnes Wahl Nieman, the widow of Lucius W. Nieman
, founder of The Milwaukee Journal. She stated the goal was "to promote and elevate the standards of journalism in the United States and educate persons deemed specially qualified for journalism." It is based at Walter Lippmann
House in Cambridge, Massachusetts
.
, Dexter Filkins
, Susan Orlean
, Robert Caro
, Hodding Carter
, Michael Kirk
, Alex Jones
, Anthony Lewis
, Robert Maynard
, Allister Sparks
, Stanley Forman
, Hedrick Smith
, Lucia Annunziata
, Jonathan Yardley
, and Philip Meyer
. It is considered the most prestigious fellowship program for journalists; Nieman Fellows have collectively won 99 Pulitzer Prizes.
The foundation is also the home of Nieman Reports, a quarterly journal on journalism issues. The journal has been in publication for over 60 years. Each spring, the foundation sponsors the Nieman Conference on Narrative Journalism, the largest conference of its kind, which attracts hundreds of writers, filmmakers, and broadcasters to Boston. In 2004, it launched Nieman Watchdog, a web site intended to encourage more aggressive questioning of the powerful by news organizations. In 2008, the foundation created the Nieman Journalism Lab, an effort to investigate future models that could support quality journalism.
Other awards based at Nieman include:
Lucius W. Nieman
Lucius William Nieman was an American businessman and founder of The Milwaukee Journal.Born at Bear Valley in Sauk County, Wisconsin, he attended Carroll College...
, founder of The Milwaukee Journal. She stated the goal was "to promote and elevate the standards of journalism in the United States and educate persons deemed specially qualified for journalism." It is based at Walter Lippmann
Walter Lippmann
Walter Lippmann was an American intellectual, writer, reporter, and political commentator famous for being among the first to introduce the concept of Cold War...
House in Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, in the Greater Boston area. It was named in honor of the University of Cambridge in England, an important center of the Puritan theology embraced by the town's founders. Cambridge is home to two of the world's most prominent...
.
Programs
The Nieman Foundation is best known as home to the Nieman Fellows, a group of journalists from around the world who come to Harvard for a year of study. Many noted journalists have been Nieman Fellows, including John CarrollJohn Carroll
-People:*John Carroll , American actor*John Carroll , Australian neoconservative writer*Sir John Carroll , British scientist*John Carroll -People:*John Carroll (actor) (1906–1979), American actor*John Carroll (author) (born 1944), Australian neoconservative writer*Sir John Carroll (astronomer)...
, Dexter Filkins
Dexter Filkins
Dexter Price Filkins is an American journalist known primarily for his coverage of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for The New York Times. He was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize in 2002 for his dispatches from Afghanistan, and he won a Pulitzer Prize in 2009 as part of a team of New York Times...
, Susan Orlean
Susan Orlean
Susan Orlean is an American journalist. She has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1992, and has contributed articles to Vogue, Rolling Stone, Esquire, and Outside....
, Robert Caro
Robert Caro
Robert Allan Caro is an American journalist and author known for his celebrated biographies of United States political figures Robert Moses and Lyndon B. Johnson...
, Hodding Carter
Hodding Carter
William Hodding Carter, II was a prominent Southern U.S. progressive journalist and author. Carter was born in Hammond, the largest community in Tangipahoa Parish, in southeastern Louisiana, to William Hodding Carter, I , and the former Irma Dutartre...
, Michael Kirk
Michael Kirk
Michael Kirk is an award winning documentary filmmaker and partial creator of the PBS show Frontline. He has produced such documentaries as "Inside the Meltdown," about the 2008 financial crisis, "Bush's War," about the Iraq War under George W...
, Alex Jones
Alex Jones (journalist)
Alex S. Jones is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who has been director of the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government since July 1, 2000. Jones is also a lecturer at the school, occupying the Laurence M...
, Anthony Lewis
Anthony Lewis
Anthony Lewis is a prominent liberal intellectual, writing for The New York Times op-ed page and The New York Review of Books, among other publications. He was previously a columnist for the Times . Before that he was London bureau chief , Washington, D.C...
, Robert Maynard
Robert Maynard
Captain Robert Maynard RN was a lieutenant and later captain in the Royal Navy, First Lieutenant of HMS Pearl, most famous for defeating the infamous English pirate Blackbeard in battle.- Naval commands and battles :...
, Allister Sparks
Allister Sparks
Allister Haddon Sparks is a South African writer, journalist and political commentator. He was the editor of The Rand Daily Mail when it broke Muldergate, the story of how the apartheid government secretly funded information projects.Sparks later wrote a number of critically acclaimed books on...
, Stanley Forman
Stanley Forman
Stanley Joseph Forman is a photojournalist who over a four-year period won a Pulitzer Prize three times while working at the Boston Herald American....
, Hedrick Smith
Hedrick Smith
Hedrick Smith is a Pulitzer Prize-winning former reporter and editor for The New York Times, an Emmy Award-winning producer/correspondent for the PBS show Frontline, and author of several books....
, Lucia Annunziata
Lucia Annunziata
Lucia Annunziata is an Italian journalist.-Career:Born in Sarno , at the age of 13 she moved to Salerno, where she attended high school and university, obtaining a degree in History and Philosophy...
, Jonathan Yardley
Jonathan Yardley
Jonathan Yardley is a book critic at The Washington Post, and at one time of the Washington Star. In 1981 he received the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.-Background and education:...
, and Philip Meyer
Philip Meyer
Philip Meyer is professor emeritus and former holder of the Knight Chair in Journalism at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He researches in the areas of journalism quality, precision journalism, civic journalism, polling, the newspaper industry, and communications technology...
. It is considered the most prestigious fellowship program for journalists; Nieman Fellows have collectively won 99 Pulitzer Prizes.
The foundation is also the home of Nieman Reports, a quarterly journal on journalism issues. The journal has been in publication for over 60 years. Each spring, the foundation sponsors the Nieman Conference on Narrative Journalism, the largest conference of its kind, which attracts hundreds of writers, filmmakers, and broadcasters to Boston. In 2004, it launched Nieman Watchdog, a web site intended to encourage more aggressive questioning of the powerful by news organizations. In 2008, the foundation created the Nieman Journalism Lab, an effort to investigate future models that could support quality journalism.
Awards
Several prestigious literary or journalism awards are based at the Nieman Foundation. They include three given in connection with the Columbia University School of Journalism:- The J. Anthony Lukas Book PrizeJ. Anthony Lukas Book PrizeThe J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize is an annual award in the amount of $10,000 given to a book that exemplifies, "literary grace, a commitment to serious research and social concern.” The prize is given by the Nieman Foundation and by the Columbia University School of Journalism. The prize is named...
($10,000, "recognizes superb examples of nonfiction writing that exemplify literary grace, a commitment to serious research and social concern") - The Mark Lynton History PrizeMark Lynton History PrizeThe Mark Lynton History Prize is an annual award in the amount of $10,000 given to a book "of history, on any subject, that best combines intellectual or scholarly distinction with felicity of expression"...
($10,000, awarded to the "book-length work of history, on any subject, that best combines intellectual or scholarly distinction with felicity of expression") - The J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress AwardJ. Anthony Lukas Book PrizeThe J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize is an annual award in the amount of $10,000 given to a book that exemplifies, "literary grace, a commitment to serious research and social concern.” The prize is given by the Nieman Foundation and by the Columbia University School of Journalism. The prize is named...
($30,000, "given annually to aid in the completion of a significant work of nonfiction")
Other awards based at Nieman include:
- The Worth Bingham Prize for Investigative Reporting ($20,000, "honors investigative reporting of stories of national significance where the public interest is being ill-served")
- The I.F. Stone Medal for Journalistic Independence ("to a journalist whose work captures the spirit of independence, integrity, courage and indefatigability that characterized I. F. Stone's Weekly")
- The Louis Lyons Award for Conscience and Integrity in Journalism ("recognizes displays of conscience and integrity by individuals, groups or institutions in communications")
- The Taylor Family Award for Fairness in Newspapers ($10,000, "recognizes fairness in newspaper reporting")
Curators
The leader of the Nieman Foundation is known as its "curator" — a holdover from a brief moment after Agnes Wahl Nieman's death when her gift was to be used to build a microfilm library of quality journalism. The foundation has appointed eight curators:- Archibald MacLeishArchibald MacLeishArchibald MacLeish was an American poet, writer, and the Librarian of Congress. He is associated with the Modernist school of poetry. He received three Pulitzer Prizes for his work.-Early years:...
, 1938-1939 - Louis M. LyonsLouis M. LyonsLouis M. Lyons was an American journalist and curator of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism. Lyons wrote articles and columns for the Boston Globe starting in the 1920s. He also wrote for the Christian Science Monitor, and published memoirs and other books. The Louis M...
(Nieman FellowNieman FellowshipThe Nieman Fellowship is an award given to mid-career journalists by The Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. This award allows winners time to reflect on their careers and focus on honing their skills....
class of 1939), 1939-1964 - Dwight E. SargentDwight E. SargentDwight Emerson Sargent was an American journalist.Born in Pembroke, Massachusetts, he graduated in 1939 from Colby College and served in Europe during World War II....
(Nieman FellowNieman FellowshipThe Nieman Fellowship is an award given to mid-career journalists by The Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. This award allows winners time to reflect on their careers and focus on honing their skills....
class of 1951), 1964-1972 - James C. Thomson Jr.James C. Thomson Jr.James Claude "Jim" Thomson Jr. was an American statesman, historian and journalist.Born in Princeton, New Jersey, to Congregationalist missionary parents only temporarily home from the Republic of China, he soon moved with them and his siblings to Nanjing...
, 1972-1984 - Howard SimonsHoward SimonsHoward Simons was the managing editor of the Washington Post at the time of the Watergate scandal, and later curator of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University....
(Nieman FellowNieman FellowshipThe Nieman Fellowship is an award given to mid-career journalists by The Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. This award allows winners time to reflect on their careers and focus on honing their skills....
class of 1959), 1984-1989 - Bill KovachBill KovachBill Kovach is a US journalist, former Washington bureau chief of The New York Times, former editor of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and co-author of the popular book, The Elements of Journalism: What Newspeople Should Know and The Public Should Expect.- Biography :Born in 1932 in East...
(Nieman FellowNieman FellowshipThe Nieman Fellowship is an award given to mid-career journalists by The Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. This award allows winners time to reflect on their careers and focus on honing their skills....
class of 1989), 1989-2000 - Robert H. GilesRobert GilesRobert H. Giles is the current curator of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.Giles graduated from DePauw University in 1955 and received his master's degree in 1956 from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism...
(Nieman FellowNieman FellowshipThe Nieman Fellowship is an award given to mid-career journalists by The Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. This award allows winners time to reflect on their careers and focus on honing their skills....
class of 1966), 2000- June 2011 - Ann Marie LipinskiAnn Marie LipinskiAnn Marie Lipinski is a journalist and the curator of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard. She is the former editor of the Chicago Tribune and Vice President for Civic Engagement at the University of Chicago...
(Nieman FellowNieman FellowshipThe Nieman Fellowship is an award given to mid-career journalists by The Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. This award allows winners time to reflect on their careers and focus on honing their skills....
class of 1990), 2011 -