2014 Annual Report

Each year, Nieman seminars bring distinguished scientists, historians, economists, policy makers, artists, writers and others to Lippmann House to explore new ideas and to share research with fellows, the Harvard community and invited guests. The speakers often discuss how journalism affects their own research and activities and, in turn, the way the press covers their work. In 2014, the foundation hosted a range of leading thinkers who enlightened, challenged and inspired.

Follow the links below to watch videos of select Nieman seminars and/or to learn more about the talks.

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  Raj Chetty, Bloomberg Professor of Economics at Harvard and a MacArthur genius grant awardee who studies the factors that control income mobility in the United States

• Noah Feldman, professor of international law at Harvard Law School who specializes in constitutional studies
• Anita Elberse, professor of business administration at Harvard Business School and author of “Blockbusters: Hit-making, Risk-taking, and the Big Business of Entertainment”
• Douglas Melton, University Professor at Harvard and co-director of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute who is leading efforts to discover new treatments for Type I diabetes
• Alan Garber, Harvard’s provost and a physician by training who serves as the university’s chief academic officer and works with the president to oversee academic policies and activities university-wide
• Griffin Matthews and Matt Gould, creators of the award-winning musical “Witness Uganda,” the story of efforts to put 10 Ugandan orphans through school

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  Daniel Gilbert, Harvard psychology professor and author of “Stumbling on Happiness” who researches the science of happiness

• Susan Crawford, visiting professor in intellectual property at Harvard Law School, faculty co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society and author of “Captive Audience: The Telecom Industry and Monopoly Power in the New Gilded Age”
• Caroline Elkins, professor of history and African and African American studies, director of the Harvard Center for African Studies and author of the Pulitzer-winning “Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain’s Gulag in Kenya”
• Amartya Sen, Thomas W. Lamont University Professor and professor of economics and philosophy at Harvard, whose books have been translated into more than 30 languages
• Jack Shonkoff, director of Harvard’s Center On The Developing Child and chair of the National Scientific Council on the Developing Child, who studies how toxic stress affects children
• Thomas Kelly, Morton B. Knafel Professor of Music at Harvard and Gregorian chant enthusiast who teaches one of the university’s most popular classes, the music survey course “First Nights”

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  Junot Díaz, Pulitzer Prize-winning author, MacArthur genius grant winner and professor of writing at MIT

• Narayanan Kasthuri, neuroscientist, assistant professor at BU Medical School and a post-doctoral fellow in Harvard’s Lichtman Lab who is mapping the brain’s quadrillion connections
• Jonathan Zittrain, Harvard Law School professor and co-founder of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society who lectures widely on free speech, privacy, and technology
• Martha Minow, law professor and dean of Harvard Law School
• Panel discussion: The MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Youth, New Media, and Participatory Politics
• Jill Lepore, David Woods Kemper ’41 Professor of American History at Harvard, author, and staff writer at The New Yorker whose most recent book is “The Secret History of Wonder Woman”
• Masha Alekhina and Nadya Tolokonnikova two founding members of the Russian punk rock collective Pussy Riot, known for its political dissent
• Drew Gilpin Faust, 28th president of Harvard University and the Lincoln Professor of History in Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences

In addition to Nieman seminars, the foundation plans a diverse series of shop talks, master classes and workshops each year for fellows and other journalists. In both public and off-the-record sessions, visiting journalists and media executives shared perspectives on their work, changes in the news industry and the future of reporting and storytelling and journalistic ethics in the digital age. The list of journalism speakers in 2014 included:

• Ben Smith, editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed (video). See also 12 Things BuzzFeed’s Ben Smith Thinks You Should Know about Journalism and Ben Smith: The Complete Transcript.

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  Reporting on Russia with Miriam Elder, foreign/national security editor at BuzzFeed, and Julia Ioffe, senior editor at The New Republic

• Scott Stossel, editor at The Atlantic and author of the bestseller “My Age of Anxiety: Fear, hope, dread and the search for peace of mind.” See also Scott Stossel on Taking Ideas Journalism Online at The Atlantic
• Reporting Risks in Afghanistan: ProPublica reporter Kim Barker in conversation with Afghan journalist and 2014 Nieman Fellow Sangar Rahimi
• Jeff Zucker, president of CNN
• Jon Lee Anderson, staff writer for The New Yorker

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  David Barboza, The New York Times bureau chief in Shanghai, who visited twice during the year to discuss reporting on China

• Afsaneh Najmabadi, professor of history and of studies of women, gender, and sexuality at Harvard, and Vivek Bald, associate professor of writing and digital media at MIT, on creating multimedia history projects
• Jake Shapiro, founding CEO of Public Radio Exchange (PRX Inc.)
• Brian McGrory, editor, The Boston Globe
• David Finkel, Pulitzer Prize winner, Washington Post editor and MacArthur genius grant awardee. See also 5 Questions for David Finkel on Nieman Storyboard.

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  Jill Abramson former executive editor of The New York Times

• Shani O. Hilton, deputy editor-in-chief, BuzzFeed. Listen to her comments at Lippmann House.
• A visit to Frontline’s WGBH studios to meet with deputy executive producer Raney Aronson and her staff
• Amy O’Leary, former deputy editor of digital operations and current deputy international editor at The New York Times

Fellows also were able to take advantage of several master classes taught by experts in several fields including: Clark Gilbert, CEO of the Deseret News Publishing Company/Deseret Digital Media (disruptive innovation); Brian Mandell, senior lecturer in public policy and director of the Harvard Kennedy School Negotiation Project; Ronald Heifetz, founding director of the Center for Public Leadership and senior lecturer in public leadership at Harvard Kennedy School; Srikant Datar, professor of accounting at Harvard Business School (design thinking); and from Storyful, Mark Little, CEO and founder, along with co-founder and editorial director David Clinch.

Nieman Fellows additionally arranged a number of more informal talks with people visiting the Harvard campus, which allowed their classmates to discuss projects and topics of interest in an intimate setting. Visitors included Luis Alberto Ferré Rangel, one of the owners of Grupo Ferré Rangel, the largest media group in Puerto Rico; Robert Hammond, a creator of the High Line Project in New York City; Glenn Fleischman editor and publisher of The Magazine (the-magazine.org); Pete Tridish, founder of the Prometheus Radio Project and a visiting scholar at MIT’s Media Lab; and Linda Tirado, author of “Hand to Mouth.”

Fellows and affiliates also planned and taught a number of peer-to-peer sessions, sharing their expertise with classmates. Learn more in our fellowship section.

Throughout the year, the Nieman Foundation worked in partnership with centers and groups at Harvard to promote public talks and events. As in the past, Nieman in 2014 co-sponsored the Harvard Writers at Work lecture series and the Herbert C. Kelman Seminar on International Conflict Analysis and Resolution at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs.

Nieman speakers at the Kelman seminars included 2014 Nieman Fellow and photographer Greg Marinovich who spoke about “The Meaning of Mandela in Today’s South Africa”; 2014 Nieman Fellow and Afghan journalist Sangar Rahimi, who discussed “Afghanistan 2014: The Way Forward” with Katherine Hunter a Weatherhead Fellow; 2001 Nieman Fellow Stefanie Friedhoff, who joined a panel discussion about “Ebola: From Real Needs in West Africa, to Fear and Fumbling in the U.S. How This Crisis is Teaching Us That Health Systems Matter”; and 2015 Nieman Fellow Elaine Díaz Rodríguez, whose talk focused on “Can Dignity Play a Role in US/Cuba Reconciliation?” Elaine also spoke about “Social Media and Internet in Cuba Today” at the Harvard’s Cuban Studies Program seminar series in September.

In the spring, Nieman co-sponsored “Latinos: The Future is Ours,” a talk by broadcast journalist and author Jorge Ramos, anchor of news programs on Univision and Fusion. He spoke about why journalists have an obligation to ask tough questions of politicians and the growing influence of the Latino voting bloc on U.S. politics.

The Nieman Foundation and Harvard’s David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies also co-hosted New Latin American Media: Innovation in Narrative and Reporting featuring some of the region’s most innovative journalists: Radio Ambulante’s Daniel Alarcón, Nuestra Aparente Rendición’s Lolita Bosch, El Faro’s Óscar Martínez – and moderated by Fusion’s Daniel Eilemberg, a 2013 Visiting Nieman Fellow who founded Mexico’s Animal Politico.

At the end of April, Nieman also co-sponsored Harvard’s Lit Fest, the first-ever literary festival on campus. Nieman deputy curator James Geary led an interactive workshop on metaphor and meaning in writing. Author and Nieman fiction writing instructor Anne Bernays ran another workshop that featured hands-on exercises sparking imagination, overcoming fear of the blank page and crafting compelling stories.

And in October, Nieman co-sponsored a Harvard Law School panel discussion on “The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS)” with NPR international correspondent and 1992 Nieman Fellow Deborah Amos and Law School professor Noah Feldman. See also “5 Questions for NPR Correspondent Deborah Amos.” in which she discusses covering the Islamic State, the moral hazard of using freelancers in conflict zones, and overcoming compassion fatigue in telling refugees’ stories.

As part of Nieman’s ongoing efforts to mentor young journalists, the foundation hosted the 2014 Christopher J. Georges Conference on College Journalism at Lippmann House in early April. During the two-day event, more than 70 students from 18 college newspapers in the Northeast gathered together to network with their peers and attend journalism workshops and breakout sessions led by Nieman journalists and other news professionals. The conference began with a keynote address from ProPublica reporter Kim Barker.

Nieman Fellows also spent time advising student journalists at The Harvard Crimson.

We remember those we lost in the Nieman community during 2014.

Margot Adler, NF ’82

Robert Drew, NF’55

William German NF ’50

Justin Kaplan, Pulitzer-winning biographer, Nieman friend

William McIlwain, NF ’58

Anja Niedringhaus  NF ’07

John Seigenthaler, NF ’59

Edward Walsh, NF ’82

Raymond White, NF ’76

William Worthy, NF’57