Word: niemans
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...last thing James Bryant Conant wanted at Harvard was a school of journalism. A chemist at heart, Conant wrote his speeches in a manner designed to keep a reporter from finding any headlines in it. Consequently, the windfall bequest left to Harvard in 1936 by Agnes Wahl Nieman, widow of the founder of The Milwaukee Journal, came as a complete surprise to Harvard's President...
...fact, many people thought the Nieman choice of beneficiary rather odd. The Boston Globe noted that "Harvard not only had no hint that the Nieman millions were coming its way, but it was difficult to find anyone at Harvard who knew anything about the Milwaukee publishing family which left Harvard one of the largest legacies in its long history...
...Agnes Nieman's bequest gave Harvard's President and Fellows a virtual carte blanche in devising their own program to utilize the funds...
Conant designated only that a selected group of journalists use the Nieman money to spend a year at Harvard with full access to University facilities. While young graduates left the College to discover the real world, journalists, who had perhaps seen enough of it, could take time to contemplate their discoveries. The Nieman Fellowships would serve as the unique bridge between the worlds of academia and of public affairs and journalism...
...program's success, according to Louis M. Lyons, a member of the first Nieman class and the Foundation's curator until 1964, lies in the "happy coincidence" that universities and newspapers are equally universal--one in the subjects it offers for study, the other in the events that it covers and studies daily...