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, 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 ...

''. 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 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 Universit ...

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, Dexter Filkins, Susan Orlean,

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 ...

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, Alex Jones,

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,

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 secr ...

Stanley Forman Stanley Joseph Forman (born July 10, 1945) is an American photojournalist, who won the Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography two years in a row while working at the ''Boston Herald American''. Biography A native of Winthrop, Massachusetts, ...

, Hedrick Smith, Lucia Annunziata,

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. Ba ...

, Philip Meyer, Howard Sochurek and Huy Duc. 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 ma ...

. 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 J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize ($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 ($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 The Worth Bingham Prize, also referred to as the Worth Bingham Prize for Investigative Reporting, is an annual journalism award which honors: "newspaper or magazine investigative reporting of stories of national significance where the public inter ...

($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 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) Plac ...

($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 films or paper, made for the purposes of transmission, storage, reading, and printing. Microform images are commonly reduced to about 4% or of the original document size. ...

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

Louis M. Lyons Louis Martin Lyons (September 1, 1897 – April 11, 1982) was an American journalist in Massachusetts and curator of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Biography Lyons was born in Boston in 1897 and was a graduate of Ma ...

(

class of 1939), 1939–1964 * Dwight E. Sargent (

class of 1951), 1964–1972 *

James C. Thomson Jr. James Claude "Jim" Thomson Jr. (b. Princeton, New Jersey, September 14, 1931 d. August 11, 2002) was an American historian and journalist who served in the government, taught at Harvard and Boston Universities, served as curator of the Neiman Fou ...

, 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 ...

(

class of 1959), 1984–1989 * Bill Kovach (

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