75th Anniversary Issue
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.
Macy has spent most of her career at The Roanoke (Va.) Times
Working in one region for one medium-sized newspaper for almost 25 years, it’s hard to enumerate the many ways that the Nieman expanded my world. I approached a series I undertook shortly after the Fellowship’s end—on the aftereffects of globalization on nearby furniture factory towns—with a much deeper scope. I called the world’s best thinkers on small-town revitalization, race and economics. I forged collaborations with two nonprofits and worked with a freelance photographer, neither of which was standard newspaper practice, just as it wasn’t common for a reporter from Roanoke, Virginia to investigate firsthand the Asian factories where all the jobs had moved. The result was a newspaper series that turned into my first book, “Factory Man,” to be published next year. The Nieman helped me create a portrait that is ultimately fairer, truer and way more complicated than I originally envisioned.
Working in one region for one medium-sized newspaper for almost 25 years, it’s hard to enumerate the many ways that the Nieman expanded my world. I approached a series I undertook shortly after the Fellowship’s end—on the aftereffects of globalization on nearby furniture factory towns—with a much deeper scope. I called the world’s best thinkers on small-town revitalization, race and economics. I forged collaborations with two nonprofits and worked with a freelance photographer, neither of which was standard newspaper practice, just as it wasn’t common for a reporter from Roanoke, Virginia to investigate firsthand the Asian factories where all the jobs had moved. The result was a newspaper series that turned into my first book, “Factory Man,” to be published next year. The Nieman helped me create a portrait that is ultimately fairer, truer and way more complicated than I originally envisioned.
