Nieman Foundation announces the 2019 Knight Visiting Nieman Fellows

The Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard will host a group of nine reporters, editors, media entrepreneurs and academics as Knight Visiting Nieman Fellows during the 2019 calendar year. Each will spend time at Harvard University to work on a project designed to advance journalism in some innovative way.

Announcing the new fellows, Nieman foundation curator Ann Marie Lipinski said: “We’re excited about this group and look forward to learning from them and working with them to advance their ideas. The visiting fellows have been a great addition to our academic-year fellowship and continue to enrich journalism through their innovative projects.”

The 2019 Knight Visiting Nieman Fellows:

Sarah Baird, a Kentucky-based freelance journalist and founder of Shoeleather, a directory of local reporters, will explore how to build community and resource-sharing among independent journalists as a means of combating the negative impacts—both local and national—of parachute journalism across the United States. Her goal is to create a toolkit that will serve the community of freelance journalists working outside of traditional media centers.
@scbaird

Kabir Chibber, most recently the business editor at Quartz, will research the sustainability of specialized email subscriptions as a driving force for readership and revenue in journalism.

Colette Guldimann, an English lecturer at the University of Pretoria, will reconceptualize the legacy of South African investigative journalist Henry Nxumalo, whose pioneering journalism under apartheid, especially for Drum magazine, includes previously unexplored work as a correspondent for American publications. Her goal is to gather and analyze Nxumalo’s journalism published in the United States.

Karima Haynes, assistant professor at Bowie State University in Maryland, will develop a curriculum for high school journalists that focuses on cyberbullying as a media literacy issue. She plans to create a guidebook for these journalists and their teachers and faculty advisers to identify and address cyberbullying on student-run news sites.
@Karima_Haynes

Heather Hendershot, a film and media professor at MIT, will examine TV coverage of the 1968 Chicago Democratic National Convention, focusing on Mayor Daley’s use of media during and after the convention. She’ll explore how the notion of journalistic neutrality was challenged at the time and what lessons can be learned to better understand the contemporary news landscape and the current presidential administration’s inflammatory, divisive accusations of “fake news.”
@ProfHendershot

Emre Kizilkaya, executive editor for Hürriyet Daily News in Istanbul, will develop an online platform for sustainable independent journalism in Turkey that will connect student journalists with senior reporters to collaborate on stories that will be selected and funded by local communities. The site will be designed as an open-source and decentralized news marketplace that will be scalable to expand to other countries.
@ekizilkaya

Taylor Lorenz, a staff writer at The Atlantic, will study how members of Generation Z create, consume and distribute news information on Instagram, including an in-depth survey of Instagram-native news accounts.
@taylorlorenz

P.E. Moskowitz, co-founder of Study Hall, a media newsletter and online support platform for media workers, will research labor relations in the media and how digital communities can grow sustainably.
@_pem_pem

John D. Sutter, a senior investigative reporter for CNN, will explore how journalists can better tell multigenerational stories, particularly those involving climate change. His goal is to use this research at the intersection of ecology, anthropology and technology to launch “Baseline,” an online documentary project that aims to revisit climate hotspots over coming generations and compress those timelines into meaningful, human stories.
@jdsutter

Nieman created the visiting fellowship program in 2012 to invite individuals with promising journalism research proposals to take advantage of the many resources at Harvard University and the Nieman Foundation. In 2015, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation provided a $223,000 grant to support the Knight Visiting Nieman Fellowships. Those eligible to apply include publishers, programmers, designers, media analysts, academics, journalists and others interested in enhancing quality, building new business models, or designing programs to improve journalism.

The Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard educates leaders in journalism and elevates the standards of the profession through special programs that convene scholars and experts in all fields. More than 1,600 journalists from 97 countries have been awarded Nieman Fellowships since 1938. The foundation’s other initiatives include Nieman Reports, a website and print magazine that covers thought leadership in journalism, Nieman Lab, a website that reports on the future of news, innovation and best practices in the digital media age and Nieman Storyboard, a website that showcases exceptional narrative journalism and explores the future of nonfiction storytelling.