Lara Salahi tells us how student journalists can help ease the local news crisis

On the latest “What Works” podcast, I talk with Lara Salahi, an associate professor of journalism at Endicott College, where she teaches a range of courses, from feature writing to digital journalism. She has also been a digital producer for NBC Universal and a field producer for ABC News. The main topic of our conversation is about how students journalists can help ease the local news crisis — and a project she’s run with her students at Endicott.

Salahi has also done some consulting and writing on science and health projects. She was executive producer on a podcast called Track the Vax, which ran during the height of the pandemic. And she collaborated with Pardis Sabeti, a systems biologist and Harvard professor who researches infectious diseases like Ebola and Lassa virus. They wrote a book together in 2018 that is still relevant called “Outbreak Culture: The Ebola Crisis and the Next Epidemic.” They updated the paperback with a new preface and epilogue in 2021 to reflect on the COVID-19 outbreak, and the lessons learned from past epidemics. 

In Quick Takes, there’s a lot going on in community journalism. One development involves the future ownership of the Portland Press Herald in Maine as well as its sister papers. The other is about a dramatic, unexpected development in hyperlocal news in New Jersey. The third involves some very good news for a daily paper in central Pennsylvania.

My Northeastern University colleague Meg Heckman pays tribute to a legendary journalist — Mike Pride, the retired editor of the Concord Monitor in New Hampshire and the former administrator of the Pulitzer Prize. Mike died on April 24 in Florida of a blood disorder. He was 76, and left his imprint on journalism in many ways. Meg worked at the Concord Monitor for more than 10 years.

Ellen Clegg was out of pocket for this podcast episode but did the sound editing and post-production. She’ll return next week.

You can listen to our conversation here and subscribe through your favorite podcast app.

Correction: An earlier version of this post misspelled Salahi’s first name.