To the Editor of The CRIMSON:

Your editorial "Nieman Nemesis" naturally interests me. Its indictment of the Nieman Fellowships is that the chief result has been a movement of Fellows from small papers to the New York papers, which, by this process, "sucked the life-blood from their journalistic brethren." You, therefore, question the value of the Nieman Fellowships to the American press.

I suppose that the metropolitan newspapers are constantly "sucking the life-blood from their journalistic brethren." All education, I am afraid, tends to concentrate talented people in the larger centers where the rewards are greatest. And this is bound to apply in some degree to education of journalists, even those who have become somewhat established in non-metropolitan areas before receiving Nieman Fellowships. It may be pointed out that Nieman Fellows are generally of an age when abler and more ambitions men have chances to move. It is inevitable that some men are going to take those chances; they would whether or not they became Nieman Fellows. The Fellowship marks them out and increases the prospect of better offers, but I should like to point out how slight has been the movement of Nieman Fellows to New York . . .

There follows a detailed summary of "which Follows went where and Why", attributing the movements to newspaper reorganizations, the rise of PM, and other factors.

It seems to me that this total movement of Nieman Fellows in the first two years is not one with which Harvard need be greatly concerned. The great majority of the men are going back to their papers, large or small, and if a year at Harvard is useful, they are taking back something to put into the newspaper job. None of them, I think, and I have known them all, has ever had any doubt that a year at Harvard was useful and that he did take something back to his job. Louis M. Lyons, Curator,   Nieman Foundation.