Most Nieman Fellows, then, supplement their specialized seminars with equally specialized independent study. There are several reasons for this.

The practical consideration of getting ahead in the newspaper business discourages inventive and imaginative study programs. For the married Fellows, transplanting a family to Cambridge and enrolling children in school are time-consuming activities that take precedence over investigating thoroughly Harvard's academic opportunities.

Moreover, Harvard intimidates the non-academic and Cambridge the non-Easterner; the combination discourages any man without exceptional self-confidence from leaving his intellectual home base. Equally restricting is the strong tradition in the Nieman program, which results in enrollment by Fellows in courses that have been popular in previous years. The standard "Nieman courses" at the present time are Merle Fainsod's course on the Soviet Union and Robert McCloskey's on constitutional law.

Jack Bass, governmental affairs reporter for the Columbia, S.C., State and a Nieman Fellow this year, illustrates the pattern. Bass, 31, was born in Columbia and has spent most of his life in South Carolina. He arrived at Harvard last fall with his wife and three children, two of them schoolage, and ended up settling in Belmont.

He enrolled in McCloskey's course and wrote his paper on James F. Byrnes, former Supreme Court Justice from South Carolina. He audited Fainsod's course and Galbraith's Economics 169. "Galbraith interests me because many of the problems in underdeveloped countries are the same ones we have in South Carolina," he said.

Bass is affiliated with Dunster House (each Fellow has a House affiliation) but visits there "only about once every other week." He and his wife spend most of their evenings in Belmont "because babysitting is a major expense." Both married and single Nieman Fellows receive the same stipend of $160 a week.

Bass keeps in close touch with events in his state. "There are some big elections next fall and I'll be covering the campaigns over the summer," he explained.

"This year is proving very useful," Bass said, but his exposure to Harvard can only be described as minimal. "I like Cambridge," he said. "You can't beat Harvard Square for people watching."

Some of the Fellows who study here in their particular fields of reporting do so for good reasons and with good results. One of the intentions of the Nieman program is to train competent journalists in special areas; in science, medicine, and economics, for example, an academic refresher is essential if the reporter hopes to talk the same language as the people he is talking to.

Anthony Lewis, a Nieman Fellow in 1956-57, spent his year at the Law School and returned to the New York Times as its Supreme Court reporter. But Lewis was a Harvard graduate and knew just what Cambridge could offer him before he came here on his Fellowship. Many others who specialize their study are merely dabbling in the areas they know most about. It makes the year easier, but it contributes little to journalism, less to Harvard, and less still to the Nieman Fellow himself.

What Jack Bass has missed at Harvard because of family and professional pressures, Robert C. Maynard, reporter for the York, Pa., Gazette and Daily has been able to find. Maynard, 28, comes from New York City, is jazz fan, and smokes Gauloises; so for him the Nieman year has required no major cultural adjustment. He settled in a bachelor apartment near Central Square.

Maynard is the only Fellow in this year's class who lacks a college education, and "not having made the college scene, I face special demands," he said. "There's something about the academic style that's different from the real-world style."

But Maynard planned his study program carefully over the summer. He wrote some academic friends and told them he wanted to study urban problems and automation. "I got back reading lists, guidance, and advice on which professors to seek out and which to avoid," he said. When he got here he enrolled in the speed reading course offered by the Bureau of Study Counsel.

His credit course is Gerald Rosenthal's Eonomics 175, "Social Welfare and Public Policy." He wrote a paper proposing a community self-help project for the Negro ghetto as a "more realistic" alternative to Great Society programs.

He audited Charles Tilly's Social Relations 124, "Urban Sociology," and Martin Kilson's Government 122a, "Government and Politics in Africa." Maynard has appeared twice on WHRB and has done some editing and rewriting for the Harvard Journal of Negro Affairs. "There's no restraint on what a Nieman Fellow