Nieman Foundation

ABOUT The Nieman Foundation houses a dynamic set of initiatives to promote and elevate the standards of journalism and educate and support those poised to make important contributions to its future. We do this through our fellowship programs; our publications, online and in-print; and programming that convenes some of the leading thinkers of our time. Nieman began as a fellowship for select journalists who were invited to spend an academic year at Harvard in pursuit of individual study plans to strengthen their knowledge and leadership skills. Since 1938, the program has awarded Nieman fellowships to more than 1,500 journalists from nearly 100 countries. We also offer a short-term visiting fellowship for individuals with a specific project to enhance journalism who would like to spend up to 12 weeks at Harvard advancing their idea. Visiting fellows have included digital innovators, technologists, academics, and journalists from the U.S. and abroad. For both groups of fellows, Harvard and Nieman offer the rare gift of time to think, learn, plan and create in a rigorous academic environment. Following their work on campus, our fellows have gone on to assume senior leadership positions in newsrooms, produce groundbreaking journalism in every medium, launch entrepreneurial projects, and win the industry’s top honors. Nieman is the only fellowship program that also houses an array of publishing and convening initiatives focused on journalism. These include: - Nieman Lab, an online reporting enterprise focused on the future of news and innovation. Nieman Lab has a staff of reporters writing daily about the most significant developments in journalism and has become a leading source of news about digital media for an international audience; - Nieman Reports, a website and print magazine that explores contemporary journalism’s most important challenges and provides a forum for the industry’s leading voices on issues of ethics, values, innovation and more. It also serves as a town square for Nieman’s global alumni network; - Nieman Storyboard, a website that showcases exceptional narrative journalism and the art and craft of reported storytelling. Storyboard has become an important gathering place for the top practitioners of narrative journalism to talk about what works and why. In addition, Harvard’s beautiful Lippmann House, where Nieman is located, is the convening center every year for dozens of seminars, master classes, conferences and awards ceremonies. These bring together not only our fellows but the broadest-possible array of those practicing, celebrating, challenging and advancing journalism. HISTORY Agnes Wahl Nieman’s generous gift of more than $1 million to Harvard University – revealed in a letter from her attorney shortly after her death in 1936 – was accompanied by a simple directive: “to promote and elevate the standards of journalism in the United States and educate persons deemed specially qualified for journalism.” To learn the story of Agnes Wahl Nieman, her will, and the creation of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard, read Mother of Invention by Maggie Jones, NF ’12. At the time, journalism was practiced primarily by those who had not attended college, and Harvard had neither a journalism school nor an intention to build one. But Agnes, widow of Lucius Nieman, editor-in-chief of The Milwaukee Journal, left decisions about the implementation of her bequest entirely to Harvard. For more on Lucius Nieman, read Lucius Nieman, Newspaperman, an edited version of a talk given to the Nieman Fellows in April 1941 by Harry J. Grant, who succeeded Nieman as publisher of The Milwaukee Journal. President James Bryant Conant consulted with many at the university and in the newspaper business, eventually committing income from the gift to the Nieman Fellowship program, designed to provide working journalists with a year of study and professional development. Initially doubtful about the undertaking, referring to it as a “dubious experiment,” Conant ultimately called the fellowship program “an invention of which I am very proud.” To learn about the Nieman Fellowship’s evolution from “dubious experiment” to transformative experience, see The Nieman Factor by Julia Keller, NF ’98. For more about the Nieman Foundation’s evolution, see the 75th anniversary issue of Nieman Reports.