Tag: Huntington News

Barbara ‘Bob’ Allen tells us about the nexus of student journalism and local news

Barbara “Bob” Allen with Penn State student Sarah Grosch. Photo by Al Tompkins is used with permission.

On the latest “What Works” podcast, Ellen Clegg and I talk with Barbara “Bob” Allen, a Los Angeles-based journalist, trainer and consultant who founded CollegeJournalism.org in 2025. The site provides resources and news for journalism educators and student media advisers across the country.

Allen is also the editor of the Student Press Report, a brand-new national news desk covering the state of the college press. The debut piece — “Cash-starved and censored, America’s student press is in crisis” — lays out the financial and free-press challenges facing campus newsrooms. Allen also writes the weekly College Journalism Newsletter.

Allen brings decades of experience mentoring student journalists. She was the adviser to the student newspaper at Oklahoma State University and most recently served as director of college programming at the Poynter Institute in Florida. She holds a master’s degree from the University of Missouri, home to both a campus paper — The Maneater — and the Columbia Missourian, a lab newspaper covering the city of Columbia.

Allen has also led an ambitious project to map every college newspaper in the country, in collaboration with the University of Vermont’s Center for Community News. That effort found more than 1,100 college newspapers, with 766 located in or adjacent to counties with little or no local news access.

My Quick Take stays close to home. The Huntington News, Northeastern’s independent student newspaper, just celebrated its 100th anniversary.

Ellen’s Quick Take is about a three-bedroom, three-bath condo in Provincetown. The Local Journalism Project, a nonprofit that partners with  The Provincetown Independent, raised money from more than 100 donors to buy the condo to house reporters. Ed Miller, editor and co-founder of the Indie, told Mike Blinder of Editor & Publisher that housing was a major barrier to attracting staff to his well-regarded newspaper on the Outer Cape.

You can listen to our conversation here, or you can subscribe through your favorite podcast app.

A summary of our conversation

We used Otter, an AI-powered tool, to produce a transcript of our conversation, then fed it into Claude and asked it to write a 1,200-word summary, which was then read by us for accuracy. The results are below. Do you find this useful? Please tell us what you think by using the Contact form linked from the top of our website.

Barbara “Bob” Allen, founder and director of CollegeJournalism.org, joined Dan Kennedy and Ellen Clegg on “What Works: The Future of Local News” to discuss the state of college journalism in the United States — its promise, its financial struggles, and its role in addressing the local news crisis.

Continue reading “Barbara ‘Bob’ Allen tells us about the nexus of student journalism and local news”

The Huntington News, Northeastern’s independent student paper, celebrates its 100th anniversary

The Huntington News, Northeastern’s independent student newspaper, is celebrating its 100th anniversary. The paper — now mostly digital — began life in 1926 as The Northeastern News, a university-supported outlet formed by the merger of two other campus newspapers.

The News went independent in 2008, changing its name and ending its dependence on funding from the administration. Yet its mission has remained the same: comprehensive coverage of Northeastern, supplemented with reporting from the surrounding community.

This week the News published an overview of the past 100 years as well as profiles of folks who were editors back in their student days. I was honored to be one of them.  There’s even merch.

The Huntington News is a vital resource on campus. The News today is better than the News I was part of in the 1970s — more professional and serious-minded, with more measured judgment. Plus there’s just much more journalism than we were able to offer in our weekly print paper 50 years ago. Congratulations to all!

The Boston Globe’s print edition gets snowed out, invoking memories of the Blizzard of ’78

The Boston Globe calls its decision not to print a paper today “unprecedented.” But as Aidan Ryan reports (sub. req.), it depends on your definition of unprecedented: “Even during the historic Blizzard of ’78, the Globe printed a few thousand copies of the Feb. 7, 1978, edition, though its delivery trucks couldn’t get through the piles of snow around its old offices on Morrissey Boulevard.”

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Moreover, Ryan notes that today’s edition will be printed and delivered with Wednesday’s paper. It strikes me as an odd move given that the Globe’s website is up and running, including the daily e-paper. But maybe there are a few print customers who really don’t want to read the paper online and who will appreciate having today’s paper — perhaps to commemorate the Blizzard of ’26.

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Northeastern journalism faculty members condemn the arrests of Don Lemon and Georgia Fort

As current and former faculty members at Northeastern University’s School of Journalism, we condemn the unconstitutional arrests of independent journalists Don Lemon and Georgia Fort. We are instructors, mentors and colleagues of young journalists, and we believe it is imperative that we stand up for the vital role of a free and unfettered press in a democratic society.

The Justice Department has filed charges against Lemon and Fort for the crime of committing journalism when they accompanied activists who entered Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota, on Jan. 18. The activists were there to protest the pastor’s alleged employment by ICE. The journalists were there to observe, to live-stream the proceedings and to interview participants, church members and the pastor before leaving the church. In so doing, they engaged in activities protected by the First Amendment with the goal of informing the public about the Trump administration’s deadly and illegal occupation of the Twin Cities.

As Amnesty International put it: “Journalism is not a crime. Reporting on protests is not a crime. Arresting journalists for their reporting is a clear example of an authoritarian practice.” We call on the Justice Department to drop all charges against Lemon and Fort and to acknowledge the centrality of journalism in holding the government and other powerful institutions to account.

Note: Our statement was published earlier this morning by The Huntington News, Northeastern’s independent student newspaper.

Belle Adler
Rahul Barghava
Mike Beaudet
Matt Carroll
Myojung Chung
Ellen Clegg
Charles Fountain
John Guilfoil
Meg Heckman
Carlene Hempel
Marcus Howard
Jeff Howe
Dan Kennedy
William Kirtz
Catherine Lambert
Laurel Leff
Peter Mancusi
Meredith O’Brien
Jody Santos
Alan Schroeder
Jeb Sharp
Dan Zedek

Note: The list of signatories has been updated.

Student journalists stand up for freedom of the press; plus, censorship at Indiana University

Surveillance footage of ICE goons grabbing Rümeysa Öztürk near Tufts last March.

Fifty-five student news organizations have signed on to an amicus brief challenging the Trump regime’s use of federal immigration law to revoke the visas of international students and deport them for speech that is protected by the First Amendment.

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The brief was filed by a coalition led by the Student Law Press Center and joined by the Associated Collegiate Press and the College Media Association. Among the student news outlets lending their support to the brief are nine from New England, including our independent student newspaper at Northeastern, The Huntington News. The others:

    • The Dartmouth, at Dartmouth College
    • The Harvard Crimson
    • The Heights, at Boston College
    • The Mass Media, at UMass Boston
    • The Mount Holyoke News
    • The Trinity Tripod, at Trinity College
    • The Tufts Daily
    • The Yale Daily News

In addition, 11 student newsroom leaders, including one from Bates College in Maine, have signed as individuals.

Continue reading “Student journalists stand up for freedom of the press; plus, censorship at Indiana University”

Six Northeastern professors urge colleges and universities to spurn ‘appeasement’

I want to share with you an important op-ed piece written by six Northeastern University professors about the challenges facing higher education. One of those professors is my School of Journalism colleague Rahul Bhargava. Their essay appears in our independent student newspaper, The Huntington News. I urge you to read it in full, but here’s an excerpt:

Many university leaders nationwide believe that we can survive by complying to reduce the impact of cuts or by staying silent to avoid becoming a priority target. This blatantly ignores the immigrant and transgender students who are afraid for their safety, worrying their university will not protect them. This ignores the faculty whose research has already been made impossible merely because it mentions a now-banned phrase. It ignores the irreparable loss of reputation when our universities sacrifice fundamentally American values like freedom of speech. We must work together to ensure this doesn’t happen here at Northeastern.

Northeastern is among several colleges and universities where students and recent graduates have had their visas revoked. And on and on it goes.

Northeastern’s independent student newspaper stands up for free speech on campus

I want to call your attention to this strong, eloquent editorial about free speech on campus that was published by The Huntington News, Northeastern’s independent student newspaper. It is, the piece says, the first time that the News’ editorial board has weighed in on an issue in six years. The editorial says in part:

While the Trump administration has yet to single out Northeastern University as it has Columbia University, Georgetown University or the University of Pennsylvania, we believe it is only a matter of time before our institution is targeted by the administration. The moment will come when the views expressed by one of our professors are denounced as “dangerous” or when the president brands the actions of a protesting student as “illicit,” making no legal effort to justify such an accusation.

In the words of Northeastern President Joseph E. Aoun, the university’s mission “does not change with the times.” Neither does a student’s fundamental right to freedom of speech and freedom of expression. Northeastern’s mission is only as strong as our commitment to defending it. If we waver, hesitate or stall in standing up for our values, then Northeastern’s mission was never as ironclad as our administration would have us believe.

Our university must not preemptively submit to an atmosphere of fear.

The editorial board — reconstituted only within the past few days, according to editor-in-chief Sonel Cutler — also calls on the university administration to do more in speaking out against the current atmosphere of repression and to be more transparent about efforts it is reportedly taking in collaboration with other colleges and universities in Greater Boston.

Overall, the editorial is even-handed, well-written and passionate in its defense of democracy and the First Amendment.

Marta Hill explains what j-schools can do to address harassment directed at student journalists

Marta Hill

On the latest “What Works” podcast, I talk with Marta Hill, an extraordinary young journalist who I got to know during her time at Northeastern.

Marta is currently a graduate student in the Science, Health and Environmental Reporting program at New York University, where she’s also the editor-in-chief of Scienceline. In that role, she works with her peers at NYU to produce what she describes as “an accessible, down-to-earth science publication.” Marta is originally from Minneapolis, which makes it almost a tragedy that my co-host, Ellen Clegg, a fellow transplant from the Twin Cities, couldn’t be with us. (Ellen will be back for our next podcast).

At Northeastern, Marta served in various capacities at The Huntington News, an independent student newspaper, including a one-year stint as editor-in-chief. She was also in my media ethics and diversity class in the fall of 2023. Whenever I teach ethics, a week gets devoted to talking about the harassment that journalists face both online and in real life. It’s a problem that’s been getting worse in recent years, and it’s something that young reporters in particular really have to think about before deciding whether to go into journalism full-time.

Marta decided she wanted to explore the issue of harassment and student journalism more deeply in the form of an honors project, and I was her adviser. She wrote a wide-ranging reported article, and a shorter version of that article was recently published by Nieman Reports, part of the Nieman Foundation at Harvard. Her article, titled “J-schools Must Better Prepare Students for Handling Harassment,” lays out some concrete steps that journalism educators can take so that their students are not caught off guard when they encounter harassment at their student news outlet or on the job.

My Quick Take is on a nonprofit initiative to bring more and better news to Tulsa, Oklahoma, a thriving metro area with nearly 700,000 people in the city and surrounding county. The area is currently served by the Tulsa World, a daily paper that’s part of the Lee Enterprises chain, which, like most corporate newspaper owners, has a reputation for aggressive cost-cutting. The new nonprofit, the Tulsa News Initiative, is built around a venerable Black newspaper, but there’s more to it than that.

You can listen to our conversation here, or you can subscribe through your favorite podcast app.

The Huntington News reports on the aftermath of April’s Northeastern encampment

Centennial Common at Northeastern University. Photo (cc) 2008 by Piotrus.

The pro-Palestinian encampment at Northeastern University’s Centennial Common may have been broken up nearly as soon as it appeared, but the events of those 48 hours in late April still reverberate. Now The Huntington News, our outstanding independent student newspaper, has published a massive overview that focuses on the police response.

Reported by Annika Sunkara, Eli Curwin and Emily Spatz, the story examines how protesters were treated by law enforcement officials who were called to the scene to take down the encampment and arrest those who refused to leave. Those officials included Boston, Northeastern and state police. As portrayed in the article, the response comes off as somewhat chaotic, with needlessly rough treatment of the some of the protesters as well as confusion over how those with a Northeastern affiliation should be treated.

The reporting speaks for itself, but I do want to highlight this:

Police ordered all individuals, including press, medics and legal observers, to leave Centennial.

Several Huntington News reporters were told to leave the barricaded area under threat of their “student status.”

Boston police ordered at least five legal observers, who had monitored the encampment since it was established, to move outside of the barricade.

How the press was treated when the encampment was broken up and arrests began on the morning of Saturday, April 27, has been a matter of controversy. Police officers have an obligation to move observers out of the way so that they’re not a hindrance and are not in danger of getting hurt. On the other hand, those observers should not be moved so far from the scene that they don’t have a clear view of how the police are doing their jobs. Journalism’s obligation is to bear witness at such moments.

Urszula Masny-Latos, executive director of the National Lawyers Guild of Massachusetts, told the News that the police moved observers “as far from the scene as possible so [the police] would not be easily visible.” She also said that Boston police overruled campus officers “and forced NLG legal observers off the grounds where the arrests happened.”

The Boston Police Department reportedly did not respond to the News about their actions.

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Huntington News editors tell Nieman Lab how they covered the encampment at NU

From The Huntington News’ Instagram feed.

The Huntington News, the independent student newspaper that covers all things Northeastern, is featured in a Nieman Lab roundup of how college papers have been covering pro-Palestinian encampments and protests on their campuses. Lab reporter Sophie Culpepper interviewed outgoing editor-in-chief Eli Curwin and his successor, Sonal Cutler, as well as student journalists at The Daily Texan at UT Austin, the Daily Trojan at the University of Southern California and The GW Hatchet at George Washington University.

The Northeastern encampment ended almost as quickly as it began — it popped up on Centennial Common on Thursday, April 25, and was cleared out by police that Saturday morning. But though the protest may have been shorter than on many other campuses, which in some cases are ongoing, it was no less fraught.

“It was very intense, and you kind of just were full of adrenaline until you had to step away,” Curwin told Culpepper. He added, though, that the chance to cover such an important story “was really cool, because it was like, this is what we’ve been learning about; this is what we’ve been practicing for.” The News had students at the site reporting around the clock right from the beginning. I should note, too, that Northeastern co-op students have been on the team covering the encampments for The Boston Globe, and Cutler has been covering protests for the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Culpepper also wrote about the difficulty of reporting on pro-Palestinian demonstrators who are protesting the actions of the Israeli government and how that has gotten caught up in the Jewish identity of many of the students — including journalists:

Curwin and Cutler are both Jewish, and Curwin has family in Israel. Well before October 7, “this issue has been … something I constantly think about,” Curwin told me. The divided campus, “people constantly criticizing or scrutinizing our coverage,” and his personal background all amounted to “a very stressful semester.”

Many of the critical Instagram comments the publication has received are along the lines of “you guys must hate Jewish people,” as Curwin said, or “you don’t care about Jewish voices,” as Cutler put it. They, like all five student journalists I spoke with across four publications, described a deep commitment to doing their best to represent everyone’s perspectives fairly and accurately.

Two other points I think are worth nothing. First, The Huntington News has been unable to get arrest records from the campus police because they are a private agency not bound by the state’s public records law. That ought to change, since they have some official police powers. Second, even with social media having falling into a morass over the past few years, the News still relies heavily on Twitter/X and Instagram. Cutler and Curwin said the News’ website is mainly accessed by parents and faculty, while the students themselves rely on social media.

Earlier:

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