NIEMAN REPORTS SUMMER/FALL 2013 VOL. 67 NO. 2-3 Nieman Reports The Nieman Foundation for Journalism Harvard University One Francis Avenue Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138 VOL. 67 NO. 2-3 SUMMER-FALL 2013 TO PROMOTE AND ELEVATE THE STANDARDS OF JOURNALISM 75 TH ANNIVERSARY ISSUE THE NIEMAN FOUNDATION AT HARVARD UNIVERSITY Special 75th Anniversary Issue Agnes Wahl Nieman The Faces of Agnes Wahl Nieman About the cover: British artist Jamie Poole (left) based his portrait of Agnes Wahl Nieman on one of only two known images of her—a small engraving from a collage published in The Milwaukee Journal in 1916—and on the physical description she provided in her 1891 passport application: light brown hair, bluish-gray eyes, and fair complexion. Using portraits of Mrs. Nieman’s mother and father as references, he worked with cut pages from Nieman Reports and from the Foundation’s archival material to create this likeness. About the portrait on page 6: Alexandra Garcia (left), NF ’13, an Emmy Award-winning multimedia journalist with The Washington Post, based her acrylic portrait with collage on the photograph of Agnes Wahl Nieman standing with her husband, Lucius Nieman, in the pressroom of The Milwaukee Journal. The photograph was likely taken in the mid-1920s when Mrs. Nieman would have been in her late 50s or 60s. Garcia took inspiration from her Fellowship and from the Foundation’s archives to present a younger depiction of Mrs. Nieman. Video and images of the portraits’ creation can be seen at http://nieman.harvard.edu/agnes. A Nieman lasts a year ~ a Nieman lasts a lifetime SUMMER/FALL 2013 VOL. 67 NO. 2–3 75TH ANNIVERSARY ISSUE TO PROMOTE AND ELEVATE THE STANDARDS OF JOURNALISM NIEMAN REPORTS CONTENTS The Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University www.niemanreports.org 2 The Meaning of the Nieman PUBLISHER Ann Marie Lipinski How the Foundation continues to “educate persons deemed EDITOR specially qualified for journalism”—and why that matters James Geary By Ann Marie Lipinski SENIOR EDITOR Jan Gardner RESEARCHER/REPORTER Jonathan Seitz DESIGN 6 Mother of Invention Stacy Sweat Designs The untold story of Agnes Wahl Nieman, her will, and the PRODUCTION ASSISTANT creation of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard Kerrie Kemperman RESEARCH ASSISTANCE By Maggie Jones Natalie Blosser, Kimberly French, Tara W. Merrigan, Anja Nilsson, Elizabeth Pike, Amanda Rodrigues, Alexandra Stote, Damia S. Towns, Zohra Yaqhubi, and Harvard University Archives TRANSLATION 18 Present at the Creation June Carolyn Erlick A brief history of Nieman Foundation traditions and fixtures, from Lippmann House to the Lab Contact us: Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University One Francis Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138 617-495-2237 nieman.harvard.edu 30 The Nieman Factor The Nieman Fellowship’s evolution from EDITORIAL OFFICES “dubious experiment” to transformative experience One Francis Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02138-2098 617-496-6308, [email protected] Copyright 2013 By Julia Keller by the President and Fellows of Harvard College Periodicals postage paid at Boston, Massachusetts and additional entries SUBSCRIPTIONS/BUSINESS 617-496-6299, [email protected] 39 75 Nieman Moments Subscription $25 a year, $40 for two years; add $10 per year for foreign airmail Seventy-five ways Nieman Fellows and the Fellowship Single copies $7.50 Back copies are available from the Nieman office have promoted and elevated the standards of journalism Please address all subscription correspondence to: One Francis Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02138-2098 and change of address information to: P.O. Box 4951 Manchester, NH 03108 ISSN Number 0028-9817 Postmaster: Send address changes to Nieman Reports 89 Nieman Notes P.O. Box 4951 Manchester, NH 03108 A chronicle of every Nieman class, from 1939 to 2014 Nieman Reports (USPS #430-650) is published in March, June, September and December by The Nieman Foundation at Harvard University One Francis Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138-2098 The Meaning of How the Nieman Foundation and Harvard continue to “educate 2 Nieman Reports | 75th Anniversary Issue | Summer-Fall 2013 the Nieman By Ann Marie Lipinski, Curator persons deemed specially qualified for journalism”—and why that matters Nieman Reports | 75th Anniversary Issue | Summer-Fall 2013 3 ippmann House has opened its doors to the 76th Class of Nieman Fellows, and with them to the future of journalism. To the counterterrorism reporter studying the quantitative social sciences for new tools to mine her urgent beat. To a magazine editor exploring the power of narrative to restore the soul of his country, a former police state. To the columnist examining the same tech- The history of the Nieman Fellowship, and nologies upending news delivery to see how likely its future, is tethered to a conviction they might thwart community gun violence. that complex times require journalism to pro- To 24 Fellows whose individual study plans duce better journalists and that Harvard can The Nieman are overlaid with a unifying inquiry—the help. University president James B. Conant, now unending investigation of the changing overcoming his initial trepidation, regarded Fellowship norms of communication. the Nieman Fellowship as one of his proud is tethered They come to Harvard in interesting times. accomplishments. Questions about whether An online retail entrepreneur is buying The the industry would find value in the Fellow- to a conviction Washington Post and The New York Times ships were answered resoundingly with 312 that complex Company is selling The Boston Globe to the applications for nine spots in the first year. owner of the Red Sox. The Justice Department The speed with which Nieman became times require has seized Associated Press phone records in much prized is underscored in a 1939 let- journalism to a crackdown on leaks. In the U.S. and abroad, ter from New York Times managing editor journalists are denouncing journalists for Edwin L. James to Conant, protesting that produce better publishing information from government his hand-selected candidate (“a graduate of journalists and whistleblowers. a very good college, the son of a doctor and We like to think that the world has become a man I regarded as eminently qualified to that Harvard especially complicated on our watch, and become an expert reporter of science news”) can help that is true. But the sunny photograph of was twice rejected by Nieman. “I have just the inaugural 1939 Nieman Fellows in this looked over the list of those who were suc- issue belies the truth of their own complex cessful,” he complained, “and, in the cases world, one shaped by Adolf Hitler, Enrico of at least six, it has got me beat.” Fermi, and Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town.” The Fellowship’s currency, then as now, 4 Nieman Reports | 75th Anniversary Issue | Summer-Fall 2013 Images by Nieman Fellow photojournalists Far left, “blacks only” train in South Africa, David C. Turnley; left, ballet break, Stan Grossfeld/The Boston Globe via Getty Images. Previous spread, clockwise, from top left: training civil rights activists in Virginia, Howard Sochurek/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images; Fallujah, Iraq, Kael Alford; mother with son’s fingers at feeding station in Niger, Finbarr O’Reilly/Reuters; attack during anti-busing protest, Boston, Mass., Stanley Forman; Tahrir Square, Cairo, Egypt, © Peter Turnley/Corbis exceeded prestige. Cleveland Plain Dealer Lippmann House is now ed to white American men. Fellows could editor Paul Bellamy wrote to Conant of the not imagine Nieman without international great need he foresaw for increased authority home to the 76th Class of journalists, who now make up half the class. among reporters. “I think the newspapers Fellows, and journalism’s A fellowship in service of a privileged few of the country have been getting away with is, then as now, insufficient to address the murder,” he observed, adding, “Here is where future is theirs to better scale of journalism’s challenges. the Harvard fellowships come in.” James I was a young investigative reporter in Chi- himself advised Conant that Nieman could be cago when Nieman curator Howard Simons especially helpful in educating reporters who had tremendous impact on journalism and passed me on a visit to my newsroom. We could “interpret accurately a complicated legal expanded Nieman’s mission and audience. spoke briefly and he handed me his business decision, and those who were able efficiently Fellowship classes seat reporters and editors card. “Apply for a Nieman,” he said. I did and to report science news,” a presaging of some from legacy news organizations alongside he phoned that spring to offer me a place in of Nieman’s greatest successes, including the practitioners from digital startups. Coders the Class of 1990. 1957 Fellowship of Times reporter Anthony and engineers building new communications For three quarters of a century that invi- Lewis, whose law studies helped shape Amer- tools have joined a discussion at Lippmann tation has endured as one of journalism’s ica’s preeminent legal journalist. House once limited to those with a press most coveted and these pages are rich with Nothing has eclipsed the goal of intellec- pass. The Nieman Journalism Lab’s focus the reasons why: the journalists whose work tually fortifying journalists, and Fellows on innovation has amassed an international helped turn the tide in apartheid South Af- still choose Harvard for the chance to study following of journalists and others who value rica; the journalists whose work chronicled with its unparalleled faculty. That study is its mission of “pushing to the future of jour- America’s civil rights era; the journalists both focused and open to the serendipitous nalism.” Shorter visiting Fellowships (a long whose eureka Harvard moments changed the discovery that can alter one’s outlook. But forgotten notion from Nieman’s inception) course of documentary, political biography, Nieman is now a bigger tent than Conant are bringing in journalists and others whose investigative reporting.