The Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy will introduce its spring fellows and visiting lecturers on Monday.

The four new fellows--who include a former Clinton speechwriter, the chief political correspondent for The New York Times and a columnist for the Boston Globe--will examine the influence of the media on a variety of issues.

The four fellows will produce a 40-page paper on their research about the media, while the visiting lecturers will teach at the Kennedy School of Government.

Richard L Berke, the chief political correspondent and senior writer for The New York Times, will be a lecturer this spring, and will teach "Press and Politicians: Behind the Scenes of the 2000 Campaign."

Spring fellow Hans Bergstrom, chief editor of Dagens Nyheter, a leading Swedish newspaper, will use the semester to continue work on his book about the biotechnology revolution, and will assess the effects of images of age in American and European newspapers.

Spring fellow Trudy Lieberman, a writer of health policy for Consumer Reports and a contributing editor to the Columbia Journalism Review, will look at how the media contributes to waste and harm in health care. She will focus on how the media covered medical interventions like bone marrow transplants for breast cancer patients, and whether these interventions were effective.

Spring fellow Jeff Madrick, editor of Challenge magazine and an economics columnist at The New York Times, will examine how the media have reported and analyzed the new economy.

Spring fellow David Nyhan, a columnist and associate editor at the Boston Globe, will address issues of fairness in journalism in the context of the Internet, webcasting and television.