The Press: Postgraduate Journalists | TIME

Four years ago in Milwaukee the widow of Lucius William Nieman, founder of the Milwaukee Journal, died leaving Harvard University $1,000,000 with which to ”elevate the standards of journalism.” This week for the third time Harvard picked a group of working newsmen (15) to go to Cambridge, with salaries paid, to absorb whatever knowledge they thirst after as Nieman Fellows. Chosen from 221 applicants was a catholic list:

Lowell Limpus, political writer for the New York Daily News; Arthur D. Eggleston, San Francisco Chronicle labor columnist; Fred Vanderschmidt, cable news editor of Associated Press in Manhattan; William M. Pinkerton, A. P. reporter in Washington, D. C., each for a half-year. Fellowships for the full year: Vance Johnson, managing editor, Amarillo Daily News; George Chaplin, city editor, Greenville (S. C.) Piedmont; Harry T. Montgomery, cable news editor of A. P. in Manhattan; Book Editor Alexander Kendrick, Philadelphia Inquirer; Ralph J. Werner, assistant financial editor, Milwaukee Journal; Editorial Writer Charles F. Edmundson of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch; Harry M. Davis, New York Times feature writer; Reporters Nathan G. Caldwell (Nashville Tennesseean), John H. Crider (New York Times Washington bureau), Boyd T. Simmons (Detroit News), William J. Miller (Cleveland Press).

Meantime the Nieman fellowships have had a chance to work out. Two crops of fellows have been at Harvard, one has been out long enough to show results. No part of Harvard’s plan was it to better the worldly welfare of its newspaper scholars. But several Niemanites, in the process of acquiring more knowledge, have also picked up better jobs.

John McLane Clark, who went to Harvard in 1938 as an editorial writer for the Washington Post, is now in Geneva with the International Labor Office as press relations counsel. Hilary Herbert Lyons Jr. of the Mobile Press Register became a Sunday feature writer for the New York Times. Louis Lyons of the Boston Globe, after a year as a fellow, himself succeeded Archibald MacLeish (now Librarian of Congress) as curator of the Nieman Foundation. The rest of last year’s fellows went home to bigger salaries, better assignments.

This year’s Nieman group includes no such fun-loving character as last year’s Edwin Lahey (Chicago Daily News), who spent a good part of his time reporting to the press on life at Harvard. The fellows are sensible, reasonably sober, and work harder at their studies than they ever did on their respective newspapers. Eight of the twelve are married, live in Cambridge with their wives and children. This year their waves have had a better time in Cambridge, partly because their husbands don’t attend as many bachelor dinners as when Archie MacLeish was curator, partly because professors’ wives have caught on to the fact that Niemanites are married, now ask fellows’ wives to dinner too.

For Nieman dinners (usually given at the Signet Club) speakers are proposed by Curator Lyons, voted on by fellows. Most popular of a distinguished list of guests this year was Eleanor Roosevelt. So engrossed in conversation was Mrs. Roosevelt that President Conant had to whisper in her ear that her train left at midnight. Stormiest dinner was given for Walter Lippmann.

Before Christmas, Niemanites threw a cocktail party for some 200 members of Harvard’s faculty, went on to dinner at Harvard’s Leverett House in jovial mood. Up rose House Master (English Professor) Kenneth Ballard Murdock, who had shared the cheer. Said he solemnly, glancing down at the tables where sat many a House tutor: “And we particularly want to thank the Nieman Fellows for the Christmas decorations—the festoons of illuminated tutors.”

ncG1vNJzZmismaKyb6%2FOpmaaqpOdtrexjm9ub2tha4VwwMeeZKmqlajAbrzOrKugqpGZwqLAxGahqK2io66ttdKtqmg%3D