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Nieman Notes
Berkeley, lasts for six weeks and is
an intensive boot camp designed for
early-career copyeditors and new
assigning editors. And next year it
will be at the Freedom Forum Diversity
Institute at Vanderbilt University
in Tennessee.
• Cross-Media: During many of the
major journalism conventions—
such as the National Association of
Hispanic Journalists’ annual workshop—staff
from Maynard stage
week-long Cross-Media Journalism
seminars. They offer this program,
which helps traditional journalists
adapt in the converged world of
new media, broadcast and print, at
universities such as USC’s
Annenberg School of Journalism.
• Fault Lines: And they have infiltrated
dozens of American newsrooms
and professional conferences
with their “Fault Lines” training, taking
Bob Maynard’s original premise
that much of today’s racial and gender-based
friction within the newsroom
stems from a lack of understanding
of each others’ points of
tension and stress.
• History: With its History Project,
the Maynard Institute has documented
and archived the work of
African-American journalists who
covered the turbulent civil rights era
of the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s. Their first
component, “The Caldwell Journals,”
was launched in 1999 and is a
personal account of Earl Caldwell,
the legendary New York Times reporter
who fought in court the
government’s attempts to seize his
notes and reporting of the Black
Panther Party. The case ultimately
was argued in the U.S. Supreme
Court and became the basis for many
state “shield laws.” Caldwell was also
the only reporter present when
Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated
in Memphis in 1968.
The Maynard Institute is also busy
expanding its reach by transforming its
Web site (www.maynardije.org) into a
destination resource for information
about journalism and diversity and
hosting the nationally recognized Web
guru Richard Prince’s “Journal-isms”
column (www.maynardije.org/columns/dickprince).
And the staff is at
work creating a way to provide newspapers
around the country with an
online interactive content audit. Editors
will be able to use this to track
ethnic, gender and age representation
in the content of the newspapers and
overlay relevant census information
about the communities they serve.
But the lasting legacy of the Maynard
Institute is in the thousands of journalists
it has touched, the bonds that have
been formed, and the multiplying effect
it has had on journalism. And now
that some of the original members of
the “family” have grown up, started
journalism families of their own in their
newsrooms, the children and grandchildren
of Bob Maynard’s vision certainly
have the training and inspiration
to guide journalism to the highest of
standards for generations to come. ■
Bryan Monroe is a 2003 Nieman
Fellow. He was previously deputy
managing editor for news, visuals
and technology at the San Jose
Mercury News and will become
assistant vice president/news for
Knight Ridder when he completes his
fellowship in June. He also taught
for several years at the Maynard
summer Editing Program.
bmonroe@fas.harvard.edu
—1939—
Irving L. Dilliard died on October
9 of complications of leukemia at the
age of 97. He was the last surviving
member of the first class of Nieman
Fellows.
Dilliard was respected as a writer of
great talent and moral conviction who
was devoted to fighting and exposing
injustice. He became a reporter at the
St. Louis Post-Dispatch in the late
1920’s. Then, after his Nieman year
and a stint during World War II as a
psychological warfare specialist and
editorial adviser for Stars and Stripes in
Europe, he returned to the Post-Dispatch
as an editorial writer.
Dilliard proved himself to be an ardent
believer in the institutions of government.
At the Post-Dispatch, he specialized
in the Constitution and the
Supreme Court. Former editor of the
Post-Dispatch William Woo (NF ’67)
said in the paper, “He would have
Supreme Court justices in for lunch,
and they would take a sandwich down
to Lucas Park and discuss issues that, if
you were a student at Harvard Law,
you’d give a semester’s tuition to merely
sit and hear.”
In 1949, Dilliard became editorial
page editor, serving until his resignation
in 1960. He chose the causes of
unjustly treated individuals, then crusaded
for them in type. In one such
case, he wrote a slew of editorials,
excerpts of which were then published
in full-page ads bought by the Post-
Dispatch in Washington papers, decrying
the detainment of Ellen Knauff on
Ellis Island based on secret “evidence.”
Public opinion eventually gave rise to a
hearing, and Knauff was allowed entry.
After his retirement, Dilliard taught,
first as a lecturing faculty member at
the Salzburg Seminar for American
Studies in Austria, then for 10 years at
Princeton University.
Dilliard had arranged to have his
body donated to a nearby medical
school. His wife, Dorothy Dorris
Dilliard, died in 1993. He is survived
by two daughters, three grandchildren,
and two great-grandsons.
—1961—
Aubrey Sussens, South African journalist,
editor and corporate communications
entrepreneur, died on November
2 at the farmhouse in Limpopo
province that he built himself in the
1960’s. He was 79.
Sussens was invited by the United
States-South Africa Leadership Devel-
112 Nieman Reports / Winter 2002