Giving back to the Harvard community they call home this academic year, three Nieman Fellows recently offered a January Term course on Harvard's historic gates. Leading a class of curious students, they explored the history of the gates from three distinct perspectives: arts journalism, writing and photography. Read more
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and historian Stanley Karnow, a 1958 Nieman Fellow known for his exhaustive and insightful coverage of Southeast Asia, has died at the age of 87. A 1947 graduate of Harvard University, Karnow began his career as a Paris correspondent for Time magazine in the 1950s, reporting on events in Western Europe and North Africa. Read more
Shelby Scates, a 1963 Nieman Fellow and longtime political reporter and columnist for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, died on Jan. 3 at the age of 81. He covered wars and presidential campaigns as well as the ins and outs of Washington state politics. An avid climber, he scaled Mount Rainier nine times, reached the summit of Mt. McKinley and in 1978, covered the first American party to climb K2. Scates was the author of three books and a memoir, “War and Politics by Other Means.” Read more
Larry L. King, NF ’70, died on December 20 at the age of 83. A native of Texas and a prolific journalist and author, King was perhaps best known as playwright of “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas,” based on an article he wrote for Playboy magazine. Read more
Bolivian journalist Raul Peñaranda, NF '08, has received the United Nations Correspondents Association’s 2012 Elizabeth Neuffer Memorial Prize (gold) for written media. U.N. Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, presented the award at a ceremony in New York City on Dec.19. Read more
James R. Whelan, the founding editor and publisher of The Washington Times, the newspaper established in 1982 by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon and his South Korea-based Unification Church, died on Saturday at his home in Miami. Mr. Whelan was ousted from the newspaper after just two years, saying it had become what its detractors had always said it was, “a Moonie newspaper.” He was a 1967 Nieman Fellow. Read more
Sebastian Kleu, a former economics editor for the South African newspaper Die Burger who also served as chairman of the South African Board of Trade and Industry, has died. He was the second South African to be named as a Nieman Fellow and came to Harvard as a member of the class of 1962. Read more
Three current Nieman Fellows have won journalism awards this fall for work done online and on air. Homicide Watch D.C., co-founded by Nieman Fellow Laura Amico and her husband Chris, took home the Knight Award for Public Service at the Online News Association’s annual conference in San Francisco. The couple received a standing ovation when the award was announced, a hard-earned reward after running the website out of their home for two years and struggling for funding. Accepting the award, Laura said “We mark every death, we remember every victim and we follow every case.” Chris noted, “For everyone who is on their own, building a business from the ground up, this one’s for you.” Read more
CBS News has brought on Holly Williams as a correspondent. Williams, who had been based in China and now lives in Turkey, is a veteran foreign correspondent, most recently for SKY News. She is a 2008 Nieman Fellow. Read more
Zwelakhe Sisulu, NF ’85, a South African opposition newspaper editor and anti-apartheid activist who was jailed several times in the 1970s and ’80s for speaking out against black oppression, died Oct. 4 at the age of 61. Read more
