Special 75th Anniversary Issue

108 Pages·2013·7.84 MB·English

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Agnes Wahl Nieman
The Faces of Agnes Wahl Nieman
About the cover:
British artist Jamie Poole (left) based his portrait of Agnes Wahl Nieman
on one of only two known images of her—a small engraving from a
collage published in The Milwaukee Journal in 1916—and on the physical
description she provided in her 1891 passport application: light brown hair,
bluish-gray eyes, and fair complexion. Using portraits of Mrs. Nieman’s
mother and father as references, he worked with cut pages from Nieman
Reports and from the Foundation’s archival material to create this likeness.
About the portrait on page 6:
Alexandra Garcia (left), NF ’13, an Emmy Award-winning multimedia
journalist with The Washington Post, based her acrylic portrait with collage
on the photograph of Agnes Wahl Nieman standing with her husband, Lucius
Nieman, in the pressroom of The Milwaukee Journal. The photograph was
likely taken in the mid-1920s when Mrs. Nieman would have been in her
late 50s or 60s. Garcia took inspiration from her Fellowship and from the
Foundation’s archives to present a younger depiction of Mrs. Nieman.
Video and images of the portraits’ creation can be seen at http://nieman.harvard.edu/agnes. A Nieman lasts a year ~ a Nieman lasts a lifetime
SUMMER/FALL 2013 VOL. 67 NO. 2–3 75TH ANNIVERSARY ISSUE
TO PROMOTE AND ELEVATE THE STANDARDS OF JOURNALISM
NIEMAN REPORTS CO N T E N T S
The Nieman Foundation for
Journalism at Harvard University
www.niemanreports.org 2 The Meaning of the Nieman
PUBLISHER
Ann Marie Lipinski How the Foundation continues to “educate persons deemed
specially qualified for journalism”—and why that matters
EDITOR
James Geary
By Ann Marie Lipinski
SENIOR EDITOR
Jan Gardner
RESEARCHER/REPORTER
Jonathan Seitz 6 Mother of Invention
DESIGN
Stacy Sweat Designs
The untold story of Agnes Wahl Nieman, her will, and the
PRODUCTION ASSISTANT creation of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard
Kerrie Kemperman
RESEARCH ASSISTANCE By Maggie Jones
Natalie Blosser, Kimberly French, Tara W. Merrigan,
Anja Nilsson, Elizabeth Pike, Amanda Rodrigues,
Alexandra Stote, Damia S. Towns, Zohra Yaqhubi,
and Harvard University Archives
18 Present at the Creation
TRANSLATION
June Carolyn Erlick
A brief history of Nieman Foundation traditions
and fixtures, from Lippmann House to the Lab
Contact us:

Nieman Foundation
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The Nieman Fellowship’s evolution from
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Copyright 2013
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Subscription $25 a year, $40 for two years;
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The Meaning of
How the Nieman Foundation and Harvard continue to “educate
2 Nieman Reports | 75th Anniversary Issue | Summer-Fall 2013
the Nieman
By Ann Marie Lipinski, Curator
persons deemed specially qualified for journalism”—and why that matters
Nieman Reports | 75th Anniversary Issue | Summer-Fall 2013 3
ippmann House has opened its doors to the 76th Class of Nieman Fellows, and
with them to the future of journalism. To the counterterrorism reporter studying the
quantitative social sciences for new tools to mine her urgent beat. To a magazine editor
exploring the power of narrative to restore the soul of his country, a former police state.
To the columnist examining the same tech- The history of the Nieman Fellowship, and
nologies upending news delivery to see how likely its future, is tethered to a conviction
they might thwart community gun violence. that complex times require journalism to pro-
To 24 Fellows whose individual study plans duce better journalists and that Harvard can
The Nieman are overlaid with a unifying inquiry—the help. University president James B. Conant,
now unending investigation of the changing overcoming his initial trepidation, regarded
Fellowship
norms of communication. the Nieman Fellowship as one of his proud
is tethered They come to Harvard in interesting times. accomplishments. Questions about whether
An online retail entrepreneur is buying The the industry would find value in the Fellow-
to a conviction
Washington Post and The New York Times ships were answered resoundingly with 312
that complex Company is selling The Boston Globe to the applications for nine spots in the first year.
owner of the Red Sox. The Justice Department The speed with which Nieman became
times require
has seized Associated Press phone records in much prized is underscored in a 1939 let-
journalism to a crackdown on leaks. In the U.S. and abroad, ter from New York Times managing editor
journalists are denouncing journalists for Edwin L. James to Conant, protesting that
produce better
publishing information from government his hand-selected candidate (“a graduate of
journalists and whistleblowers. a very good college, the son of a doctor and
We like to think that the world has become a man I regarded as eminently qualified to
that Harvard
especially complicated on our watch, and become an expert reporter of science news”)
can help that is true. But the sunny photograph of was twice rejected by Nieman. “I have just
the inaugural 1939 Nieman Fellows in this looked over the list of those who were suc-
issue belies the truth of their own complex cessful,” he complained, “and, in the cases
world, one shaped by Adolf Hitler, Enrico of at least six, it has got me beat.”
Fermi, and Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town.” The Fellowship’s currency, then as now,
4 Nieman Reports | 75th Anniversary Issue | Summer-Fall 2013
Images by
Nieman Fellow
photojournalists
Far left, “blacks only” train
in South Africa, David C.
Turnley; left, ballet break,
Stan Grossfeld/The Boston
Globe via Getty Images.
Previous spread, clockwise,
from top left: training civil
rights activists in Virginia,
Howard Sochurek/Time &
Life Pictures/Getty Images;
Fallujah, Iraq, Kael Alford;
mother with son’s fingers
at feeding station in Niger,
Finbarr O’Reilly/Reuters;
attack during anti-busing
protest, Boston, Mass.,
Stanley Forman; Tahrir
Square, Cairo, Egypt, ©
Peter Turnley/Corbis
exceeded prestige. Cleveland Plain Dealer Lippmann House is now ed to white American men. Fellows could
editor Paul Bellamy wrote to Conant of the not imagine Nieman without international
home to the 76th Class of
great need he foresaw for increased authority journalists, who now make up half the class.
among reporters. “I think the newspapers Fellows, and journalism’s A fellowship in service of a privileged few
of the country have been getting away with is, then as now, insufficient to address the
future is theirs to better
murder,” he observed, adding, “Here is where scale of journalism’s challenges.
the Harvard fellowships come in.” James I was a young investigative reporter in Chi-
himself advised Conant that Nieman could be cago when Nieman curator Howard Simons
especially helpful in educating reporters who had tremendous impact on journalism and passed me on a visit to my newsroom. We
could “interpret accurately a complicated legal expanded Nieman’s mission and audience. spoke briefly and he handed me his business
decision, and those who were able efficiently Fellowship classes seat reporters and editors card. “Apply for a Nieman,” he said. I did and
to report science news,” a presaging of some from legacy news organizations alongside he phoned that spring to offer me a place in
of Nieman’s greatest successes, including the practitioners from digital startups. Coders the Class of 1990.
1957 Fellowship of Times reporter Anthony and engineers building new communications For three quarters of a century that invi-
Lewis, whose law studies helped shape Amer- tools have joined a discussion at Lippmann tation has endured as one of journalism’s
ica’s preeminent legal journalist. House once limited to those with a press most coveted and these pages are rich with
Nothing has eclipsed the goal of intellec- pass. The Nieman Journalism Lab’s focus the reasons why: the journalists whose work
tually fortifying journalists, and Fellows on innovation has amassed an international helped turn the tide in apartheid South Af-
still choose Harvard for the chance to study following of journalists and others who value rica; the journalists whose work chronicled
with its unparalleled faculty. That study is its mission of “pushing to the future of jour- America’s civil rights era; the journalists
both focused and open to the serendipitous nalism.” Shorter visiting Fellowships (a long whose eureka Harvard moments changed the
discovery that can alter one’s outlook. But forgotten notion from Nieman’s inception) course of documentary, political biography,
Nieman is now a bigger tent than Conant are bringing in journalists and others whose investigative reporting. Lippmann House is
or Agnes Wahl Nieman likely foresaw. Her inquiries hold promise for the craft or the now home to the 76th Class of Fellows, and
mandate to “educate persons deemed spe- industry. Master classes in leadership, writing journalism’s future is theirs to better.
cially qualified for journalism” was issued at courses, or conferences about the economics The day Simons offered me a Nieman was
a time when “journalist” was easy to define, of immigration hone skills for Niemans and the last time we spoke. He died that summer
media competition was slim, and business other journalists who would benefit. I don’t after choosing a final fortunate class, too
models were simple. Exploding economics know that Fellows have ever worked harder. soon for us to thank him for changing our
and an emerging class of information pro- Much about president Conant’s Harvard has lives, our work.
viders, influencers and technologists have changed and so too Nieman, once restrict- I thank him here.
Nieman Reports | 75th Anniversary Issue | Summer-Fall 2013 5
6 Nieman Reports | 75th Anniversary Issue | Summer-Fall 2013
Mother
of Invention
The untold story of Agnes Wahl Nieman, her will, and the
creation of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard
By Maggie Jones, NF ’12 In the 1890s, at a time when many women didn’t
dare, Agnes Wahl climbed on her bicycle and pedaled
along the streets of Milwaukee. The cycling craze
had swept the country, and for women it offered more
than the thrill of being on two wheels. Women tossed
their corsets and layers of petticoats and headed to
meetings, jobs, school without being dependent on a
horse, a carriage—a man. As Susan B. Anthony said
at the time, bicycling had “done more to emancipate
women than anything else in the world.”
Pedaling along those same Milwaukee streets was
another adventuresome, forward-thinking spirit:
Lucius W. Nieman, who went from folding newspa-
pers for the Waukesha Freeman when he was 13 to
becoming editor of the newly founded Milwaukee
Daily Journal, at age 24.
Agnes and “Lute,” as he was known to friends, may
have passed each other on their bikes as he was heading
to work—he biked back and forth from his room at the
Milwaukee Club—and she was off to a meeting of the
French Club, of which she was the president, or one of
her many other civic activities. Maybe she waved him
down to invite him to the latest opera performance at
her house, where Lucius had become a frequent guest
in the mid-1890s.
The truth is, we know little about their relationship
and the woman without whom there would be no
Nieman Foundation. Only two photographs of Agnes,
who stood just under 5 feet 4 inches with light brown
hair and bluish-gray eyes, are known to exist: One is
a photograph of Agnes and Lucius beside a printing
ILLUSTRATION BY ALEXANDRA GARCIA, NF ’13 Nieman Reports | 75th Anniversary Issue | Summer-Fall 2013 7
An Unexpected Bequest
Harvard president James B. Conant had never heard of Agnes Wahl Nieman before he got word in 1936 that she had made a major gift to the
college. It is not clear why she chose Harvard, but her attorney Edwin S. Mack, who was a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School and
an active member of Milwaukee’s Harvard Club, may have suggested the bequest.
press, probably when she was in her late 50s or 60s; had named the university as the principal beneficiary
the other is from a collage of photos published in the of her estate, in her husband’s memory. Conant was
Journal in 1916 under the headline, “Prominent Wom- not, in fact, enthused about the Milwaukee heiress’s
en of Milwaukee Co-operate for the Success of Great desire to educate a bunch of journalists from around
German-Austrian Bazaar.” The Milwaukee Journal the United States at his elite university.
itself includes only shards about her social life, her And it almost didn’t happen. The idea to leave money
civic responsibilities, her travels. We don’t even know to Harvard—which relatives later contested in a heat-
her exact date of birth. Census records from 1870 ed court battle—arose in the final days of her life. If
and 1880 suggest she was born in 1860 or 1861, but things had gone just slightly differently in 1936, there
a passport application lists her as born “on or about” would be no Nieman Foundation—not at Harvard,
January 26, 1865. The longest piece of writing about not anywhere.
Agnes that has turned up is the front-page obituary
that ran in the Journal in 1936. Agnes Elizabeth Guenther Wahl was born in
Harvard certainly did not know about the widow of Chicago, the eldest of three daughters of wealthy
Lucius Nieman when the president, James B. Conant, German-Americans, groomed with the impecca-
received a letter from her lawyer announcing that Agnes ble manners, easy conversational skills, and passion for
8 Nieman Reports | 75th Anniversary Issue | Summer-Fall 2013