Golden to deliver Morris Lecture at Nieman

Tim Golden, senior writer for The New York Times, will present the 2008 Joe Alex Morris Jr. Memorial Lecture at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard on Feb. 21, 2008.

Golden has written extensively on the treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and at U.S.-run prisons in Afghanistan. His reporting has been recognized for its fresh, balanced portrayal of the U.S. military’s tactics in dealing with prisoners that have resulted from broader American policies.

The Morris Lecture honors the foreign correspondent of the Los Angeles Times who was killed in 1979 while covering the Iranian Revolution in Tehran. His family members, Harvard classmates, and friends created the lectureship two years later. Morris posthumously received the Nieman Fellows’ Louis M. Lyons Award for Conscience and Integrity in 1981.

A member of the Harvard Class of 1949, Morris inherited an interest in international news from his father, who had served as foreign editor of United Press International and the New York Herald Tribune. After working as a local reporter at The Hartford Times and Minneapolis Tribune, the younger Morris worked at Newsweek and later the Los Angeles Times. The Middle East was his journalistic home for 25 years.

Golden, the 2008 Morris Lecture speaker, was a Nieman Fellow in the class of 1996, and currently serves as a member of the Nieman Advisory Board. Prior to joining the New York Times, Golden worked for the Miami Herald and United Press International. He was a member of the Times team that won the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for international reporting for articles about drug corruption in Mexico. He also shared a 1987 Pulitzer Prize for national reporting for stories on the Iran-Contra affair while working at the Miami Herald. Golden’s stories on the drug trade received awards from the Overseas Press Club and the Nancy Dickerson Whitehead Prize.

Last year, Golden was a finalist for the Taylor Family Award for Fairness in Newspapers for his stories on Guantanamo. The Nieman Foundation presents the award.

Established in 1938, the Nieman program is the oldest midcareer fellowship for journalists in the world. The fellowships are awarded to working journalists of accomplishment and promise for an academic year of study at the University. More than 1,200 journalists from 88 countries have studied at Harvard as Nieman Fellows. Additionally, the foundation publishes the quarterly magazine Nieman Reports and is the home of the Nieman Watchdog Journalism Project, which encourages reporters and editors to monitor and hold accountable those who exert power in all aspects of public life.