In other words: a Nieman year can be anything that a journalist cares to make of it. James C. Thomson, whom President Bok appointed as Nieman Curator last Spring, says that "the doors to Harvard are remarkably open to us." Kevin Buckley, a current Nieman agrees: "We had a briefing in the Fall from representatives of all the Harvard schools," Buckley said. "Most of the briefings I've ever gone to have been to tell me what I can't do, but this one was different. We were told to get something for ourselves here. That message proved quite accurate."

Thomson says that the Nieman program consists of two tracks--one academic, and the other an "extracurricular" series of Nieman luncheons, dinners and beer and cheese seminars which bring the group together and provide a thread of continuity between academia and the world of reporting and public affairs.

Just in the one year following Thomson's appointment, the Nieman program has changed to a degree that former Niemans find "dramatic." They give the new curator high marks for having restored the program to its hard-drinking vitality. Many of the changes were obvious and long-overdue, they say, but they also note that they could not have occurred without the financial shot in the arm which Thomson's predecessor, Dwight E. Sargent, administered to the program.

This year for the first time, the Nieman Foundation has offered a "two for the price of one" option so that Nieman spouses can make as full use of Harvard's facilities and the special Nieman activities as the Fellows themselves. Towards this end, Thomson gives each Nieman family a certain allowance to cover baby-sitting and day-care costs. The experiment has worked well, Thomson says, and will probably be continued in the future.

Although the terms of the Nieman will directed that journalism be interpreted in a broad sense, Nieman Fellowships have gone almost exclusively to reporters and editors of the print press. Within this category, certain newspapers and magazines have had a constant relationship with the Nieman program. For example, Pinkerton says, "the South, decade after decade, kicks up more interesting newspapermen than any part of the country," and they are amply represented in the ranks of Nieman alumni.

In addition to a dearth of radio and television journalists, the Nieman program has brought only eight women to Harvard. In order to correct some of these imbalances, Thomson sent out a mass mailing to newspapers last fall. Almost twice the usual number of applications came back, and of this group, 40 will be interviewed by the Nieman Selection Committee this weekend.

In the process of "utilizing Harvard," Niemans pursue a variety of academic and extracurricular activities. For example, current Nieman Bob Stanton, an AP science writer from the West Coast, spent much of the year as a bench regular in the Biology labs to observe and experience a scientist's milieu first-hand. Niemans Wayne Greenhaw of The Alabama Journal and Ed Williams, capitol correspondent for The Greenville, Miss. Delta-Democrat Times, offered an Institute of Politics seminar on Southern Politics. Another Nieman-sponsored course this Spring was a Quincy House seminar on journalism led by Bob Wyrick, a former Newsday reporter.

In addition, more than half of this year's Nieman group enrolled in a fiction writing seminar taught by Diana Thomson. ("While we don't want to turn our journalists into novelists, many of them can't suppress the itch." Thomson remarked).

Whether it is through the Nieman program or outside it, the Fellows tend to plunge into all the things which they never had time to do while on the job. Bob Wyrick, for example, has done most of the cooking for his family and has studied classical guitar at the New England Conservatory of Music this year. Although he estimates that a good classical guitarist must practice four hours every day, he notes some improvement on an average of two hours' daily practice.

As the Nieman line-up indicates, participants bring radically varying backgrounds to the program and use Harvard in individualized ways. Most Niemans concur, however, on the basic professional benefits derived from the year-long experience. The year literally stops the presses of their professional lives and allows them to gain distance on a world which they confront daily at close-range.

This chance to remove themselves from the mainstream of day-to-day events and pressures is in fact the aspect of the program which is most favorably underscored by former Niemans.

"Most Niemans are basically unhappy about something in the profession or in the work they were doing," Bill Stockton, an AP science writer and current Nieman says. "But the people who have come here find the year has greatly changed them. Their experience can be translated into tangible things that the world of journalism can see. You have a year to be thoughtful and reflective in a highly charged intellectual atmosphere--and it puts it all together."

Kevin Buckley, Newsweek's Saigon correspondent for four years until he came to Harvard as a Nieman this year, says that the program can't fail to help people be better journalists. "It's a good thing to take a year off in any profession," Buckley said. "You particularly need to escape the deadening pace that most jobs in journalism require. For me it was extremely valuable to have the time to get reacquainted with the United States and to think it all through."

Although Carl Sims, former editor of The Bay State Banner, has not yet completed his Nieman year, he feels free to call it "the most valuable year of my professional life." Sims, who covered urban and ghetto affairs prior to coming to Harvard, said that the year gave him free rein to bounce some of the "gut feeling" he picked up as a reporter off of academic specialists in race relations, ghetto politics and urban sociology.

Sims said he applied for a Fellowship because he felt that as a black professional, he would be needed to explain what "black people are doing and why they got there." A year later, Sims says that he feels less strongly about that particular goal. "This year has helped to convince me that Americans blacks are two distinct things--they're Americans and they're blacks, in that order," Sims said. "Unlike all other groups, except for Mayflower Wasps and American Indians, they are in a unique position. Blacks don't have a heritage except an American one. They are a people who have to make it because there's no place for them to run to, nothing to hide behind. It's more a question of class than of skin color."