The Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University is the primary journalism institution at

Harvard Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

. It was founded in February 1938 as the result of a $1.4 million bequest by Agnes Wahl Nieman, the widow of

Lucius W. Nieman Lucius William Nieman (December 13, 1857 – October 1, 1935) was an American businessman and founder of ''The Milwaukee Journal''. Biography Born at Bear Valley in Sauk County, Wisconsin, Lucius's father was Conrad Nieman; and Sara Elizabet ...

, founder of ''

The Milwaukee Journal The ''Milwaukee Journal Sentinel'' is a daily morning broadsheet printed in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where it is the primary newspaper. It is also the largest newspaper in the state of Wisconsin, where it is widely distributed. It is currently o ...

''. Scholarships were established for journalists with at least three years' experience to go back to college to advance their work. 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 (September 23, 1889 – December 14, 1974) was an American writer, reporter and political commentator. With a career spanning 60 years, he is famous for being among the first to introduce the concept of Cold War, coining the te ...

House in

Cambridge, Massachusetts Cambridge ( ) is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. As part of the Boston metropolitan area, the cities population of the 2020 U.S. census was 118,403, making it the fourth most populous city in the state, behind Boston, ...

Programs

The Nieman Foundation is best known as home to the

Nieman Fellow The Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University awards multiple types of fellowships. Nieman Fellowships for journalists A Nieman Fellowship is an award given to journalists by the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. ...

s, a group of journalists from around the world who come to Harvard for a year of study. Many noted journalists, and from 1959, also photojournalists, have been Nieman Fellows, including

John Carroll John Carroll may refer to: People Academia and science *Sir John Carroll (astronomer) (1899–1974), British astronomer *John Alexander Carroll (died 2000), American history professor *John Bissell Carroll (1916–2003), American cognitive sci ...

Dexter Filkins Dexter Price Filkins (born May 24, 1961) 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 Afghanista ...

Susan Orlean Susan Orlean (born October 31, 1955) is a journalist, television writer, and bestselling author of ''The Orchid Thief'' and '' The Library Book''. She has been a staff writer for ''The New Yorker'' since 1992, and has contributed articles to many ...

Robert Caro Robert Allan Caro (born October 30, 1935) is an American journalist and author known for his biographies of United States political figures Robert Moses and Lyndon B. Johnson. After working for many years as a reporter, Caro wrote ''The Power Br ...

Hodding Carter William Hodding Carter, II (February 3, 1907 – April 4, 1972), was a Southern U.S. progressive journalist and author. Among other distinctions in his career, Carter was a Nieman Fellow and Pulitzer Prize winner. He died in Greenville, Missis ...

Michael Kirk Michael Kirk is a documentary filmmaker and partial creator of the PBS show ''Frontline'', where he worked as senior producer until 1987. Kirk founded and currently owns the production company, the Kirk Documentary Group, in Brookline, Massach ...

Alex Jones Alexander Emerick Jones (born February 11, 1974) is an American far-right and alt-right radio show host and prominent conspiracy theorist. He hosts ''The Alex Jones Show'' from Austin, Texas, which the Genesis Communications Network broadcas ...

Anthony Lewis Anthony Lewis (March 27, 1927 – March 25, 2013) was an American public intellectual and journalist. He was twice winner of the Pulitzer Prize, and was a columnist for ''The New York Times''. He is credited with creating the field of legal jour ...

Robert Maynard Robert Maynard (19 September 1684 – 4 January 1751) was a British lieutenant, and later captain, in the Royal Navy. Little is known about Maynard's early life, other than he was born in England in 1684 and then later joined the English Navy. ...

Allister Sparks Allister Haddon Sparks (10 March 1933 – 19 September 2016) was 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 sec ...

, Stanley Forman,

Hedrick Smith Hedrick Smith is a Pulitzer Prize-winning former ''New York Times'' reporter and Emmy award-winning producer and correspondent. After serving 26 years with ''The New York Times'' from 1962-88 as correspondent, editor and bureau chief in both Mosc ...

Lucia Annunziata Lucia Annunziata (Sarno, 8 August 1950) is an Italian journalist. Career Born in Sarno (in the Salerno province), at the age of 13 she moved to Salerno, where she attended high school and university, obtaining a degree in History and Philosoph ...

Jonathan Yardley Jonathan Yardley (born October 27, 1939) was the book critic at ''The Washington Post'' from 1981 to December 2014, and held the same post from 1978 to 1981 at the ''Washington Star''. In 1981, he received the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. Bac ...

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 news ...

Howard Sochurek Howard Sochurek (27 November 1924 – 25 April 1994) was an American photojournalist. Life and career Howard J. Sochurek was born in 1924 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He graduated from Princeton University in 1942 then enlisted on 1 December that ye ...

and

Huy Duc Truong Huy San, better known by his pen name Huy Đức, is a Vietnamese journalist, blogger, and author. In 2005-2006 he studied at the University of Maryland under a Hubert H. Humphrey Fellowship. In 2012 he received a fellowship from the Nie ...

. It is considered the most prestigious fellowship program for journalists; Nieman Fellows have collectively won 101

Pulitzer Prizes The Pulitzer Prize () is an award for achievements in newspaper, magazine, online journalism, literature, and musical composition within the United States. It was established in 1917 by provisions in the will of Joseph Pulitzer, who had made hi ...

. The foundation is also the home of ''Nieman Reports'', a quarterly journal on journalism issues. The journal has been in publication for more than 60 years. For several years, ending in 2009, the foundation sponsored the annual Nieman Conference on Narrative Journalism, the largest conference of its kind, which attracted hundreds of writers, filmmakers, and broadcasters to Boston. The narrative program now consists of a writing seminar for Fellows, and a public website, Nieman Storyboard, which covers storytelling across media. In 2004, the Foundation launched Nieman Watchdog, a website 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 Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism is located in Pulitzer Hall on the university's Morningside Heights campus in New York City. Founded in 1912 by Joseph Pulitzer, Columbia Journalism School is one of the oldest journalism sc ...

: * The

J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize The 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 ...

($10,000, "recognizes superb examples of nonfiction writing that exemplify literary grace, a commitment to serious research and social concern") * The

Mark Lynton History Prize The 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". The prize is one of three awards given as p ...

($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 Award ($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 Louis may refer to: * Louis (coin) * Louis (given name), origin and several individuals with this name * Louis (surname) * Louis (singer), Serbian singer * HMS ''Louis'', two ships of the Royal Navy See also Derived or associated terms * Lewis ( ...

("recognizes displays of conscience and integrity by individuals, groups or institutions in communications") * The

Taylor Family Award for Fairness in Newspapers Taylor, Taylors or Taylor's may refer to: People * Taylor (surname) **List of people with surname Taylor * Taylor (given name), including Tayla and Taylah * Taylor sept, a branch of Scottish clan Cameron * Justice Taylor (disambiguation) Pl ...

($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 Microforms are scaled-down reproductions of documents, typically either photographic film, films or paper, made for the purposes of transmission, storage, reading, and printing. Microform images are commonly reduced to about 4% or of the origin ...

library of quality journalism. The foundation has appointed eight curators: * Archibald MacLeish, 1938–1939 * Louis M. Lyons (

class of 1939), 1939–1964 *

Dwight E. Sargent Dwight Emerson Sargent (April 3, 1917 – April 4, 2002) was an American journalist. Born in Pembroke, Massachusetts, he graduated in 1939 from Colby College and served in Europe with the United States Army during World War II. Sargent work ...

(

class of 1951), 1964–1972 * James C. Thomson Jr., 1972–1984 *

Howard Simons Howard Simons (June 3, 1929 – June 13, 1989) 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. Early life and education Si ...

(

class of 1959), 1984–1989 *

Bill Kovach Bill Kovach ( sq, Bill Kovaçi, born 1932) is an American journalist, former Washington bureau chief of '' The New York Times'', former editor of the ''Atlanta Journal-Constitution'', and co-author of the book ''The Elements of Journalism: What N ...

(

class of 1989), 1989–2000 * Robert H. Giles (

class of 1966), 2000 – June 2011 *

Ann Marie Lipinski Ann Marie Lipinski (born January 1956) 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. ...

(

class of 1990), 2011 –

References

External links

Nieman Foundation

Nieman Journalism Lab

''Nieman Reports''

Nieman Watchdog
{{Authority control Harvard University 1938 establishments in Massachusetts Educational foundations in the United States American journalism organizations Organizations established in 1938