Richard Steyn, NF ’86, editor of The Star, was granted a one-on-one interview with Nelson Mandela during his first trip back to Robben Island after his release from prison. Read more
Nearly 26 years separated my first and second encounter with Nelson Mandela. The first time, the African National Congress leader was in the dock in Pretoria facing a strong chance of being executed for treason. He had already spent a … Read more
I met with Nelson Mandela many times after his release from prison, both as a journalist and a friend, but two occasions stand out as illustrative of what I regard as his most profound human quality: his keen interest in … Read more
Students at the Melpark Primary School in Johannesburg sing “Happy Birthday” as they celebrate former president Nelson Mandela’s 95th birthday. Photo by Denis Farrell/The Associated Press Nelson Mandela, … Read more
“Writing the Book: How to Craft Narratives, from Concept to Content” is an in-depth exploration of how journalists can become authors, told by writers of memoirs, novels, and nonfiction … Read more
In 2002, Panama became the first country in Latin America to put a law on the books guaranteeing open access to government records. Yet a law … Read more
During a discussion with 2014 Nieman Fellow Anna Fifield, right, at the Nieman Foundation, Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker Errol Morris said that Donald Rumsfeld, the subject of his new film … Read more
As she lay dying, the widow of a Milwaukee newspaper editor made a gift that has now invigorated journalism for 75 years. Agnes Wahl Nieman, a well-educated woman with a fondness for bicycling, willed money to Harvard to “promote and elevate the standards of journalism.” That $1.4 million bequest (worth about $23 million in today’s dollars) funded the Nieman Fellowship program that has brought 1,442 journalists from around the world to Harvard for a year of study. To celebrate the Nieman Foundation for Journalism’s 75th anniversary, Nieman Reports tells the stories of 75 Nieman Fellows, among them pioneers in biography, documentary filmmaking, and investigative journalism. Read more
Lippmann 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. Read more
Novelist and poet Mircea Cartarescu came of age in Romania during the Communist regime of the 1970s, but even under democratic rule he has found his voice silenced by those in power. As he explained in a talk at the … Read more
