Fellowships

During their time in Cambridge, Nieman Fellows attend classes at Harvard and MIT, participate in weekly Nieman events including seminars, shop talks and workshops, and take courses open exclusively to them, such as narrative nonfiction writing, taught by author Steve Almond and Op-Ed writing, which was taught in the spring by Jeffrey Seglin, director of the Harvard Kennedy School Communications Program and a lecturer in public policy.

The fellows take turns presenting Soundings, talks in which they explain why they do what they do as journalists, and moderate many of the talks scheduled each week at Lippmann House. They additionally organize more casual DIY gatherings during which they meet with invited guests to discuss a broad range of topics or share their expertise with classmates in workshops and training sessions.
Throughout the year, the fellows often give back on campus, speaking in classes and in Harvard Houses, participating in panel discussions and conferences, and mentoring student journalists at The Harvard Crimson.

In the fall, they start the year with a lightning round of talks about their work and each spring, they learn about the book industry during a panel discussion with publishing executives and literary agents organized by author and 1994 Nieman Larry Tye.

The fellows share their knowledge and skills with the Harvard community in a variety of ways and settings throughout the year.

Deborah Berry, a Washington, D.C.-based national correspondent for USA Today, moderated “Ethical Stewardship and University Collections,” a panel discussion at Harvard’s Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging Forum “Reckoning & Transformation.”

At the same conference, 2023 Nieman Fellow Kristofer Ríos, a multimedia journalist and producer with Muck Media, moderated the keynote talk “Leveraging the Power of Communities to Inspire Transformation” with Mónica Ramírez, co-founder of Alianza Nacional de Campesinas (the National Farmworker Women’s Alliance).

In March, Tanya Kozyreva, an investigative reporter based in Kyiv, Ukraine, and Taras Prokopyshyn, publisher and CEO of The Ukrainians Media, an independent media company in Lviv, Ukraine,  participated in the panel discussion “Fighting for Truth: Wartime Journalism in Ukraine” organized by Harvard’s Ukrainian Research Institute (HURI). The two fellows also helped arrange a photo exhibit with images from the war in Ukraine presented by HURI and the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative and co-sponsored by the Nieman Foundation. It featured work by Ukrainian photojournalist Oksana Parafeniuk and photojournalist Pierre Toutaine-Dorbec.

Kozyreva additionally took part in the panel discussion  “The War in Ukraine: How Does It End?”, organized by the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, and she gave a talk at the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation titled “Tackling Corruption and Illicit Finance: The Case of Ukraine.”

Adefemi Akinsanya, an international correspondent and anchor for Arise News in Lagos, Nigeria, was invited to speak in “Leading Through Professionalism, Social Responsibility, and System Design,” a class taught by Leigh Hafrey, a senior lecturer in communication and ethics at the MIT Sloan School of Management. In the fall, 2024 Nieman Fellow Surabhi Tandon, and Indian video journalist, reporter and documentary filmmaker, spoke Hafrey’s class “Leadership Stories: Literature, Ethics, and Authority.”

Ashish Dikshit, formerly editor of BBC News Marathi and now senior news editor for the BBC World Service, joined TED Fellow and metaLAB Affiliate Anjan Sundaram for “Impossible Choices” a conversation about Sundaram’s book “Breakup: A Marriage in Wartime” which deals with the toll public service work often takes on the personal life of journalists and frontline war correspondents. The event was co-sponsored by the Nieman Foundation.

Darryl Fears, a Washington Post reporter who covers environmental justice and, spoke at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Black Policy Conference session “The Roots We Sew,” a conversation between Black leaders working on environmental justice in the U.S. and abroad.

Rebecca Richman Cohen, a 2022 Visiting Fellow, documentary filmmaker and lecturer at Harvard Law School, screened her film “The Recall: Reframed.” She discussed changing the narrative around responses to sexual violence with a panel that included 2021 Nieman Fellow Amber Payne, co-editor in chief of The Emancipator. Cohen’s film examines the 2018 recall of California Judge Aaron Persky, who lost his judgeship after handing down a sentence deemed too lenient by many in the sexual assault case involving Stanford swimmer Brock Turner.

Ruth Tam, co-host of the podcast “Dish City ”and a digital editor at WAMU in Washington, D.C., performed in “The Alice Complex,” a student play debuting at the Harvard Playwrights’ Festival in April.

In May, Fahim Abed delivered the Nossiter Lecture at Dartmouth College and discussed his path to becoming a journalist. He was a local reporter for The New York Times in Afghanistan until the Taliban takeover in 2021. Abed was evacuated from Kabul with a number of his colleagues and relocated to the United States.

At Harvard, Abed screened and discussed the Frontline documentary “America and the Taliban,” which he worked on as a researcher.

Fellows also organized several trainings to share their expertise with their classmates:

Natasha Khan, Asia correspondent for The Wall Street, invited Sasha, the Harvard Police Department’s community engagement dog, to meet the fellows. Sasha and her partner, officer Steve Fumicello, work to bring comfort and support to members of the Harvard University community and to promote health and wellness on campus.

At the end of the spring semester, Deborah Berry arranged a trip to the Harvard Art Museum for her classmates that focused on the intersectionality of art and journalism.

On World Press Freedom Day in May, Nieman Fellows Danny Fenster, editor-at-large for Frontier Myanmar, and Nigerian news anchor Adefemi Akinsanya spoke about their experiences with press suppression during a Washington Post Live event organized with Reporters without Borders to publicize the release of the 2023 World Press Freedom Index. Jason Rezaian, NF ’17, global opinions writer at the Post, his wife Yeganeh Rezaian, a senior researcher at CPJ, also spoke at the event, which included U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and is one of several efforts supported by the Post’s Press Freedom Partnership.

Also on World Press Freedom Day, Olga Churakova, an independent Russian journalist and podcast host who covers political developments in Russia, participated in a Committee to Protect Journalists event at The New York Times that included CPJ’s president Jodie Ginsberg, Diane Brayton, executive vice president and general counsel at the Times, Dean Baquet, executive editor of the Times‘ Local Investigations Fellowship, and P. Kim Bui, director of product and audience innovation at The Arizona Republic.

Several 2023 Nieman Fellows taught at Harvard Extension School’s summer session including Alex Smith (Writing for Public Radio), Amanda Becker (News Reporting and Writing), Danny Fenster (Advanced Narrative Nonfiction: The Investigative Essay) and Ruth Tam (Podcasting).

Denise Hruby, an Austrian environment and investigative journalist focusing on the climate and biodiversity crises, spoke to students at Quincy House about her coverage of climate change and related issues.

Sarah Varney, a senior correspondent for KFF Health News and a special correspondent and commentator for PBS NewsHour, spoke to students taking “Practical Communications Strategies and Tactics for Influencing a Better World” taught by instructor Andy Burness at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

Annie Jieping Zhang, founder and CEO of Matters Lab, a decentralized Web3 social media platform located in Hong Kong and Taiwan, moderated a talk with 2007 Nieman fellow Ian Johnson about his book, “Sparks: China’s Underground Historians and their Battle for the Future” at Harvard Book Store. She also spoke to “The Dial” about reporting from exile.

In September, 2024 Nieman Fellows Cristela Guerra, a senior arts and culture reporter at WBUR, Julian Benbow, a Boston Globe sports reporter, Manasseh Azure Awuni, the founding editor-in-chief of The Fourth Estate, a nonprofit investigative journalism project in Ghana, and Rachel Pulfer, executive director of Journalists for Human Rights in Toronto, answered questions about their work and offered advice to students considering a careers in journalism during a session at Harvard’s Mignone Center for Career Success.

During another event organized by the Office of Career Services in October, Nieman Fellows James Barragán, a politics reporter for The Texas Tribune, Andrew Ryan, an investigative reporter at The Boston Globe, along with Samantha Henry, Nieman’s assistant director for programming and special projects, reviewed clips of students and offered professional feedback to students planning to apply for summer internships and full-time jobs in journalism.

Three of the 2024 Nieman Fellows — Denise Schrier Cetta, a producer and writer for “60 Minutes,” Lebo Diseko, a South African correspondent for the BBC World Service, and Sarah Varney, a senior correspondent for KFF Health News and a special correspondent and commentator for PBS NewsHour — led a media training session for Harvard faculty to teach them how to best present and explain their research to journalists.

Schrier Cetta took the lead in organizing informal coffeehouse talks that allow fellows to come together to learn from one another and discuss shared interests. Recent topics have included tough editorial decisions, security on the job and gender and LGBTQ issues in reporting and in newsroom. Ronald Heifetz, founding director of the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard Kennedy School, introduced the idea during a seminar on leadership, encouraging the fellows to build strong connections now that will help them in the future.

Julia Barton, vice president and executive editor at the audio production company Pushkin Industries, created a podcast club for all interested in audio storytelling. The group shares links, favorite stories, podcast news and more.

Andrea Patiño Contreras, a Colombian video journalist and editor based in Boston, participated in the panel discussion “Dealing with Disenchantment: Aesthetic Enlightenment and the Art of Decolonization’ at Boston’s Goethe Institute. She also was a guest speaker in Jody Santos’ class “Covering Conflicts: Peace, War and the Media” at Northeastern University’s School of Journalism, and at Emerson College, where she spoke to Gino Canella’s documentary class. Patiño Contreras additionally served as a judge for the multimedia division of the 78th College Photographer of the Year competition.

At the 2023 German American Conference at Harvard Kennedy School in October, Yana Lyushnevskaya, a senior journalist at BBC Monitoring’s bureau in Kyiv, Ukraine, spoke on the “Reporting on War” panel, which was moderated by Nieman Lab deputy editor Sarah Scire.

Ilya Marritz, who covers threats to democracy for ProPublica and Trump legal matters for NPR, moderated another panel at the conference: “Bridging the Divide: How Societal Changes and Structural Disparities Influence Social Cohesion” with Kerstin Kohlenberg, former U.S. correspondent for Die Zeit, and Dominic Ponattu, deputy chief of staff to the Minister for Special Tasks and Head of the German Federal Chancellery.

Cristela Guerra, a senior arts and culture reporter at WBUR in Boston, moderated a talk with playwright Inua Ellams ahead of a performance of the play “The Half-God of Rainfall” at Harvard’s American Repertory Theater that was attended by Nieman Fellows.

Sonya Groysman, a Russian reporter and video documentary director for TV Rain, Russia’s last independent television channel, participated in “Russian Independent Journalism and Society amid the Backdrop of War” a panel discussion at the Fletcher School at Tufts University sponsored by The Moscow Times. Groysman lives and works in exile.

In September, Guerra also moderated “Reinterpreting ‘Madama Butterfly’ for the 21st century,” a conversation with Boston Lyric Opera’s stage director Phil Chan and artistic advisor/dramaturg Nina Yoshida Nelsen about their approach to reimagining the famous opera. And in November, she moderated “Keeping the Charge” an event celebrating outgoing ArtsEmerson executive director David C. Howse with a conversation about the power and potential of arts leadership in Boston.

Guerra and classmate Jikyung Kim, deputy editor, anchor and writer at the Munhwa Broadcasting Corporation inSouth Korea, gave a presentation about the role of the media in relation to migrant and refugee issues in their class “Migration, Refugees and Human Rights.”

Manasseh Azure Awuni, the founding editor-in-chief of The Fourth Estate, a nonprofit investigative journalism project in Ghana, was a guest lecturer  in his class “Corruption: Finding It and Fixing It” at Harvard Kennedy School.

Jaemark Tordecilla, former head of digital media at GMA News in the Philippines, helped organize and spoke on a panel at the screening of “Aswang,” a feature-length documentary on the drug war in the Philippines. The event was part of the Carr Center’s Human Rights Film Series.

Beandrea July introduced composer and choreographer Richard Kennedy as part of “A Black History of Electronic Dance Music,” a lecture series and course that explores electronic dance music’s foundation in Black musical traditions and urban history. July also performed as a member of the Tufts Third Day Gospel Choir at a concert in November.

Throughout the year, Nieman Fellows take turns explaining why they do what they do as journalists during weekly talks called Soundings. Some highlights from 2023, via Nieman Reports:

Addressing Power Equity Issues in The News
Kristofer Ríos, NF’ 23, on why journalists need to be aware of the way we cover vulnerable or underrepresented communities

“What comes first, being a journalist or being a citizen?”
Yana Lyushnevskaya, NF ’24, on the difficult dilemma Ukrainian journalists face when covering war in their own country

How a Trip to Angola Helped One Reporter Tell the Story of Race in America
Deborah Barfield Berry, NF ’23, on covering slavery, the Civil Rights Movement, and the murder of George Floyd

“I Carry the Tears of Victims”
Sheikh Sabiha Alam, NF ’23, on covering human rights violations in the narrow space left for independent journalism in Bangladesh

A Dangerous Flight in ISIS Territory
Moises Saman, NF ’23, on documenting the desperation of the Iraq war