Background and Family: Jewish, antebellum plantation owner ancestry; upbringing in New Orleans in the late 1950s and 1960s, father was a lawyer from a family based in Donaldsville, Louisiana with conservative politics, mother was a child psychologist with liberal politics from Perth Amboy, New Jersey; Early Life and Education: childhood exposure to newspaper journalism; early exposure to editors an d writers of New Journalism, writing for local newspapers in high school, admittance to Harvard College, role as Editor-in-Chief at The Harvard Crimson, theme of early commitment to career in journalism; Career in Professional Journalism: writing for Washington Monthly, Texas Monthly, The Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker, meeting Vartan Gregorian during Gregorian's tenure at the New York Public Library; Career in Journalism Education: teaching at University of Texas at Austin, teaching as an adjunct instructor at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, teaching assistant in Joan W. Konnor's course, interface with Lee C. Bollinger, work on Bollinger's journalism education task, Bollinger's appointment of Lemann to deanship of Columbia Journalism School, Accrediting Council on Education in Journalism and Mass Communication and the status of journalism graduate schools, state of modern journalism's Fifth Estate function, crisis in the business of journalism, implementation of the MA program and reworking the MS program, The Reconstruction of American Journalism, successful students; Work with Carnegie Corporation of New York: Carnegie-Knight Initiative on the Future of Journalism, John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Geoffrey Cowan, Loren Ghiglione, Susan R. King, Orville H. Schell, Alex S. Jones, Alberto Ibargüen, attempt at writing The Flexner Report for journalism, News21.
Journalists--United States; Newspaper editors--United States; Journalism--Study and teaching; Universities and colleges--Graduate work; Lemann, Nicholas; Bollinger, Lee C., 1946-; Gregorian, Vartan; Carnegie Corporation of New York; Columbia University. Graduate School of Journalism; John S. and James L. Knight Foundation
Format
oral histories
Genre
Interviews
Date
2013
Physical Description
75 pages; 1 digital audio file (71 min.); 1 digital audio file (74 min.)
Note (Biographical)
Former Dean of Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism
Note
Interviewed by Mary Marshall Clark on May 28, 2013 and June 6, 2013.
Note (Provenance)
Nicholas Lemann, Gift, 2015
Note (Copyright)
Copyright by the Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York and Carnegie Corporation of New York, 2015.