Choicest assignment any serious-minded newsman can get is a Lucius W. Nieman Fellowship at Harvard. Founded in 1937 by a $1,000,000 bequest from the late Agnes Wahl Nieman, widow of the founder of the Milwaukee Journal, the Fellowships: 1) are open only to newspapermen with jobs; 2) pay each holder an amount approximating his regular salary, plus free tuition; 3) require no academic credits or examinations. Each applicant must satisfy Harvard that he has a definite study plan that will make him more useful to his community, his paper and himself when he goes back to work.
Since September the first eight Nieman Fellows have been following their collective nose for knowledge into Harvard's classrooms, laboratories, libraries, professorial dens. (A ninth, Irving Billiard of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, will start next term.) As a combination managing editor and wet nurse they have able Poet-Journalist Archibald MacLeish, whose official title is "Curator of the Nieman Collection of Contemporary Journalism."
Curator MacLeish sees that the Fellows get reserved press-box seats at Harvard Stadium games, observes how their eight wives and eleven children bear up under Boston's climate. He also arranges and presides at weekly lively dinners where Fellows hobnob with journalistic guests and Harvard bigwigs, get shaken out of their grooves. Widow Nieman, who had a taste for gin, would have enjoyed the Martinis at these affairs. The Fellows have come to refer to her affectionately as "Aunt Agnes," and Aunt Agnes' Fellows have acquired a free-swinging conversational style under brilliant Archie MacLeish. After one long-winded speech from a guest economist, Fellow Ed Lahey rose and inquired: "Would you mind summarizing the point in ten thousand words?''
Last week Harvard had already heard from 50 would-be applicants for next September's Nieman Fellowships. Probably twelve will be granted. Meanwhile, an "interim report" by Curator MacLeish modestly measured progress to date. Statistics: each Fellow takes five or more courses; the Baltimore Sun's Reporter Frank Hopkins leads with ten, ranging from American Constitutional Government to Byzantine History. Favorite instructors include Felix Frankfurter and Dr. Heinrich Brüning, ex-Chancellor of Germany, and Granville Hicks.
Curator MacLeish also noted that: 1) no attempt is made to teach journalism as such; 2) the Fellowships are still "experimental"; 3) "The assumption that journalists with questions to ask may properly be allowed to dispense with ordinary scholastic requirements has not as yet been overthrown."