Freelancer Andreas wins Nieman Fellowship

JAKARTA (JP): Andreas Harsono, a Jakarta-based freelance journalist, has been named a Nieman Fellow for the 1999-2000 academic year at Harvard University in Boston, the United States.

Andreas and 11 other international journalists will join 12 American journalists, who were named earlier this month, to make up the 62nd class of Nieman Fellows, AP reported on Tuesday.

The Nieman Fellowship program is the oldest mid-career fellowship program for journalists in the world. The fellowships offer a year of academic study at Harvard.

More than 1,000 journalists from the United States and 69 other countries have participated in the program.

Andreas will take a variety of courses in government, economics, human rights and national security issues.

He is the fourth Indonesian to win a Nieman Fellowship since the program was established in 1938.

Indonesia's first Nieman Fellow was Sabam Siagian, the former chief editor of The Jakarta Post and former Indonesian ambassador to Australia. Sabam received his fellowship during the 1978-1979 academic year.

Goenawan Mohamad, chief editor of Tempo news magazine, was Indonesia's second Nieman Fellow in 1990-1991. The third was Ratih Hardjono, a Kompas correspondent, who received her fellowship in the 1993-1994 academic year.

The other 11 international journalist to receive fellowships for the 1999-2000 academic year are Mark Chavunduka of Zimbabwe; Dennis Cruywagen of South Africa; Nikola Djuric of Serbia; Ragip Duran of Turkey; Benjamin Fernandez of Paraguay; Aytul Gurtas of Turkey; Tatsuya Inose of Japan; Mojgan Jalali of Iran; Rakesh Kalshian of India; Lee Kwangchool of South Korea and Laura Lynch of Canada. (hhr)