Press Reporter in the First Nieman Fellows Class

Nieman Fellows Class of 1939

First row: Osburn Zuber, Edwin W. Fuller Jr., Edwin Lahey, Archibald MacLeish (Curator), Herbert Lyons Jr., Frank Hopkins. Second row: Arthur Wild (Director of Harvard Public Relations), Irving Dilliard, John Clark, Edwin Paxton, Louis Lyons.

Hilary Herbert Lyons Jr. had cherished a desire for journalism as a student at Mobile’s elite, private University Military School, but his father opposed his son going into newspaper work.

Rather than discourage his son directly, the elder Lyons went to Press Publisher Ralph B. Chandler and asked the publisher to hire his son and work him so hard that he would never want to work for a newspaper again. The scheme, however, had an effect opposite from that intended by the senior Lyons and the young Herbert began a distinguished career as a journalist.

After graduating from University Military School in 1927, Lyons attended journalism school at Columbia University in New York. During the summers after his second year, he worked at the Press as a replacement reporter for vacationing staffers and became a regular reporter after earning his degree.

When the Nieman Foundation awarded its first journalism fellowships in 1938, the selection committee named Lyons as one of nine recipients. After studying economics at Harvard University for nine months, Lyons returned to Mobile to write editorials for the Press. But his ambitions were greater than the opportunities Mobile offered, and he left the Port City to join the staff of The New York Times.