New Nieman Fellows Chosen; Record 5 of 11 Are Women

The Nieman Foundation announced yesterday that five of the 11 journalists chosen to serve as Nieman fellows next year are women, the most ever in the program's 44-year history.

This year's selection culminates a ten-year trend during which the number of women journalists from the electronic media in the program has grown steadily. James C. Thomson, curator of the Foundation, said yesterday. Margot Adler and Anita Harris, two of the women chosen, work for public radio and television, respectively.

Always Available

The Nieman Fellows combine personal academic study with seminars open to students and Faculty members during their stay at Harvard. "They are available as speakers and counselors for anyone who is at all interested in journalism," Thomson said.

When the Nieman Fellowships for Newspapermen began in 1938. "The name made it obvious what we were after," Thomson said. Gradually, women became more aware of the program, and since the 1970s, "more and more very talented ones have applied," he added.

Innocent Victims

Recent attacks on American journalists sparked by revelations of falsified sources at the Washington Post and the New York Daily News, will not change the focus of the Nieman program, Thomson said.

"Questions of ethics have been with us heavily since Victnam and especially Watergate and they will be a continuing concern next year," he explained.

Other Fellows named yesterday include Alexander Jones, editor of The Greenville (Tennessee) Sun. Judith Rosenfield, an editor with the Louisville (Kentucky) Times and Fdward Walsh a reporter with the Washington Post.

Thomson said the Foundation will add six to eight foreign journalists to the program early this summer. Their names will be announced next fall after approval by the Corporation.