Shorenstein Taps New Fellows

The Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy announced its latest crop of fellows earlier this week, welcoming a group of four journalists and academics who will study issues currently confronting news outlets.

The Shorenstein Center’s fellowship, which began with the organization’s founding in 1986, funds journalists and scholars in media or politics for a semester-long research project at Harvard. Fellows are selected by a committee of the Shorenstein Center’s senior staff and Kennedy School faculty.

Among this year’s fellows is Maralee Schwartz, a former economics editor at the Washington Post, who is spending her third semester at Harvard after serving as an Institute of Politics fellow in 2007 and a visiting Murrow lecturer at the Kennedy School last fall.

Schwartz said she will study the emerging role of nonprofit entities in providing content for newspapers struggling to cope with the financial pressures of the digital age.

“I think that one of the hot issues now in journalism is ‘survival,’” Schwartz said. “Is the world of nonprofits and foundations a part of that survival?”

Incoming fellow James O’Shea, who was previously editor and executive vice president of the Los Angeles Times, said he relished the prospect of taking a step back from day-to-day journalism to think deeply.

“It’s a terrific fellowship,” O’Shea said. “It takes you out of your cocoon. It gives you alternate views, a broader perspective on what’s going on in journalism.”

O’Shea said he will draw on personal experience as he crafts his research project, which will focus on “the conflicts between editors and owners of newspapers.” O’Shea was leading the L.A. Times when it was taken over by Sam Zell, a billionaire real-estate investor, who many criticized for cutting content and jobs in response to the paper’s deteriorating financial situation.

“I’ll try to use my experience from that time to determine what broader themes have contributed to the problems that the industry faces,” O’Shea said.

Mitchell Stephens, an author and professor of journalism at New York University, and Michael Traugott, a professor of communication studies at the University of Michigan, will also serve as fellows.

In addition, Nicco Mele, founder of Internet consulting company EchoDitto, will serve as a visiting Murrow lecturer, the position Schwartz held this fall. Mele, who was an IOP fellow last semester, will teach a class about the power of digital media.

—Staff writer Evan T. R. Rosenman can be reached at erosenm@fas.harvard.edu.