The actual routine of a Nieman's Cambridge life is pretty much up to the individual. Organized activity centers around the fortnightly dinners and weekly seminars. At each dinner some guest of distinction in journalism or in public affairs leads a discussion.

The list of these guests is a striking comment on the interest which the profession has in the fellowships. Publishers like Arthur Sulzberger, Joseph Pulitzer, Mrs. Helen Reid, Marshall Field, John and Gardner Cowles have all come to Cambridge. John Dos Passos, Bernard DeVoto, and Lewis Mumford have represented authors; working correspondents like William Shirer, John Gunther, Arthur Krock, and Vincent Sheean keep the vacationing newsmen up to date.

Curator Lyons, a Fellow himself in the first group, is high in praise of these speakers: "To such figures in journalism and public affairs successive groups of Nieman Fellows are indebted for provocative ideas and good talk starting at dinner and lasting often until midnight."

Seminars are the other specially-planned feature of a Nieman Year. Each week a member of the Faculty prepares a paper or leads a roundtable on his field. The beer and cheese of the Faculty Club--seene of the every-Tuesday sessions--has provoked what many Niemans consider the finest talk of their time here. The Fellows pick their speakers from Faculty, administration, and a few outside sources.

The Pattern: Flexibility

The pattern of Nieman Fellowships is still flexible. In ten years the Foundation has developed a workable pattern for operation; but Louis Lyons would be the first to assert that lack of rigid pattern is one of the biggest advantages for the vacationing newsmen.

A Nieman Fellowship can be whatever the individual wants to make it. For some men it has been merely a pleasant year of leisurely study; but for the great majority it has been much more--the chance to write a book, or learn a specialty, or study a field on a schedule more conducive to knowledge than the daily push of a copy desk.

Back in 1936, Mrs. Nieman is reputed to have had the University of Wisconsin in mind for her be quest, but decided on Harvard because of "radical tendencies" in the mid western school. They still blush in the Journal city room when the subject is mentioned.