The Nieman Foundation will announce today that of the 12 journalists chosen to serve next year as Nieman fellows, three work in television--the most ever in the program's 45-year history.

"Television is obviously central to how Americans receive their news," James C. Thomson, curator of the Foundation, said yesterday. He added that over the past few years both the "number and quality" of Nieman applicants from television has been steadily improving.

With television's advantage over newspapers in live coverage, "urban afternoon newspapers just can't compete with the TV evening news," Thomson said.

But he said that "newspapers will always serve a deeply vital function and will never be displaced" despite television's mass appeal.

The fellows--selected from an applicant pool of about 150 American journalists--include two Blacks and three women. This year's class of 11 Nieman fellows included five women, a level Thomson called the "high-water" mark in the program's history.

Thomson downplayed the drop in female members of the incoming class, explaining that the field of journalists has opened up "vastly" since he took over as curator of the Foundation ten years ago. When the Fellowships began in 1938, the letterheads read "Nieman Foundation for Newspapermen"; it has since been changed to Nieman Foundation for Journalism.

Nominated by a committee of professors and journalists, the Nieman fellows attend classes and seminars during their one-year stay at Harvard.

The new fellows--who have all had at least three years of professional experience--are reporters and editors Eric Best. Daniel Brewster, Huntly Collins, Callie Crossley, Gilbert Gaul, Guy Gugliotta, Sonja Hillgren, David Himmelstein, Karl Idsvoog, William Marimow, Charles Sherman, and photographer Eli Reed.