Nieman Program to Double Size

The Ford Foundation has given Harvard a $1.2 million grant to double the number of Nieman Fellowships. Currently, the Nieman program allows eight professional newspaperman to spend a year studying at the University.

Under the terms of the award, the money cannot be used until Harvard matches the grant from other sources. In addition to expanding the number of annual fellowships, the grant will enable the University to increase substantially the fellows' weekly stipends.

The grant may also be used to support a Nieman Institute, "still in the thinking stages," for senior journalists past the Nieman age limit of 40, according to Dwight E. Sargent, Curator of the Foundation. Visiting Institute scholars would have the same privileges as the regularly-appointed Nieman fellows, but for periods of a few months rather than a full year.

Individual Programs

Nieman fellows spend a full academic year of unrestricted study at Harvard to improve their professional competence. With the aid of the Curator and Faculty members, each fellow designs a program of classwork, seminars, and reading to make full use of the University's resources.

Sargent also plans to expand both the Nieman Library of Contemporary Journalism at 77 Dunster Street and the quarterly Nieman Reports. The Reports covers events in journalism and circulates among leaders in the mass media and the 325 past Nieman fellows.

"The Ford grant is a tribute to James B. Conant '14, the imaginative President Emeritus of Harvard, who conceived the Nieman Foundation," Sargent said yesterday. "We are also indebted to Louis M. Lyons, the Curator for 25 years, who developed the program and molded it into an institution of great durability and service."

Began in 1937

The fellowships were established at Harvard in 1937 by the wife of the late Lucius W. Nieman, founder of the Milwaukee Journal. The bequest was made "to educate persons deemed especially qualified for journalism and to promote the standards of journalism in the United States."

The grant is the second to Harvard from the Ford Foundation this year. In January, $12.5 million was given to develop the University's program in international affairs. This grant will endow nine new professorships and help finance construction of a building to centralize Harvard's now widely-scattered international studies program.