Programming & Special Projects

As a new generation of journalists brings unique challenges and experiences to Harvard, the Nieman Foundation has revised its approach to programming in three important ways this year.

First, seminars and shop talks for fellows have been fine-tuned to be responsive to each new class’s needs. Master classes have been added to provide intensive instruction on core leadership skills and timely subjects such as app development for news or data mapping. Also, fellows learn from each other in internal shop talks focusing on, for example, entrepreneurial journalism and investigative reporting.

Secondly, the Nieman Foundation is opening up much of its internal programming to external audiences—from students and faculty at Harvard to journalists worldwide. At a time of continued turmoil in the news industry, we want to share more broadly the conversations about journalism, digital innovation, best practices and leadership that we host at Lippmann House and elsewhere on campus.

Thirdly, via increased collaboration with institutions across Harvard and beyond, we seek to connect the Nieman Foundation and its mission even more deeply with the university, our alumni and the larger journalistic community.  We co-hosted an election forum for faculty and fellows with the Provost's Office in September, for example, and invited the public to a talk with Jodi Kantor, author of “The Obamas," in October during the run-up to the U.S. presidential elections. The event was hosted in collaboration with Harvard Writers at Work.

In December, Yaakov Katz, a 2013 Nieman Fellow and military reporter at The Jerusalem Post, shared the stage with Harvard Law School professor Bob Mnookin, an expert on negotiation and conflict resolution, to discuss the latest escalations of conflict between Gaza and Israel and the challenges to finding more peaceful ways forward.

And in a very different example, the foundation, including several alumni, joined forces with the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma last May to enable a trauma journalism workshop in Mexico City, focusing on emotional literacy and self care for reporters and editors who cover and live with violence. Mexico has become one of the most dangerous countries in the world for journalists.

The Nieman class of 2013 recently selected Mexican journalist Marcela Turati, a co-organizer of that workshop, as winner of the Louis Lyons Award for Conscience and Integrity in Journalism.