Kovach's job in Atlanta was merely one stop in a distinguished career. He began reporting in 1959 at the Johnson City Press Chronicle in Tennessee and spent much of the 1960s covering the civil rights movement, Appalachian poverty and southern politics for the Nashville Tennesseean.

In 1968, Kovach went to work for The New York Times, where he remained for 18 years, ultimately serving as Washington bureau chief.

In 1986, Kovach left The Times for Atlanta, where the Journal-Constitution won two Pulitzer Prizes under his leadership. But he left Atlanta in favor of Cambridge in 1988 after being denied what he felt to be sufficient editorial independence.

He leaves his post at the Nieman Foundation with none of those bad feelings.

"At this job, I had the opportunity to do things I had not dreamed of," Kovach said.

He said he was "fortunate enough to be in this position when the Cold War ended and the [Berlin] Wall came down."

Kovach capitalized on these historic changes by bringing more international journalists to Harvard and helping to encourage a free press in countries throughout Eastern Europe and Latin America. These accomplishments, he said, were his proudest achievements.