Rewriting the Story of Local News

A University-anchored newsroom heralds the future of community journalism.

From the spring 2026 issue of Sacred Heart University Magazine

Key Highlights

• Sacred Heart has created a sustainable model for local journalism by integrating community reporting directly into its journalism curriculum rather than treating it as a standalone project
• The initiative began by reviving the Easton Courier after the local newspaper closed, restoring community news coverage while giving students real newsroom experience
• With support from a $100,000 Press Forward grant, Sacred Heart launched Fairfield County News, expanding coverage across Fairfield County with student-produced multimedia journalism

By Joseph A. Alicastro

What began with a single small-town newspaper has grown into a newsroom where Sacred Heart University students report for communities beyond campus, not just as a classroom exercise.

The morning Connecticut opened early voting in October 2025, a video story appeared on the Fairfield County News (FCN) website. The piece examined how artificial intelligence is reshaping political campaigns, from deepfakes and robocalls to the spread of misinformation across media platforms. The report asked what it means for voters trying to distinguish fact from fiction. It drew on multiple expert sources, moved from the promise of emerging technology to its immediate dangers and argued that media literacy may be the most important tool citizens carry into the voting booth.

The byline belonged to Danielle Grillo, a Sacred Heart University student.

Grillo is not a veteran reporter. Rather, she is part of a growing group of student journalists at Sacred Heart producing original public-interest reporting that reaches audiences well beyond the University’s campus. Her work is part of a larger story, one that begins with a shuttered local paper and asks who will sustain local journalism as traditional newsrooms continue to disappear.

Since 2005, nearly 3,500 newspapers have closed in the United States, according to Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. Entire counties have lost every dedicated local news source, becoming what researchers call “news deserts.” Connecticut has not been spared. In 2018, when Hearst acquired seven of the weekly newspapers published by Hersam Acorn, the remaining titles, including the Easton Courier, which had served its Fairfield County town for four decades, did not survive. Overnight, roughly 7,500 residents lost their only dedicated news source.

In 2020, Sacred Heart’s School of Communication, Media & the Arts (SCMA) relaunched the Courier as a faculty- and student-produced digital newsroom, integrating real journalism into the curriculum. The paper revitalized local information for Easton residents and went on to earn more than 60 awards from the Society of Professional Journalists, competing not in a student category but against professional reporters and publications.

“The Courier showed that a university newsroom can produce journalism people rely on,” says James Castonguay, SCMA’s associate dean and the initiative’s news director. “But from the beginning, we saw it as a starting point, not a finish line.”

What started in Easton did not stay in Easton.

In fall 2025, with support from a $100,000 Press Forward grant, SCMA launched Fairfield County News (FCN), a multimedia news platform covering Fairfield, Bridgeport, and the surrounding region. Rather than simply expanding the Courier, the team built a second newsroom with broader reach and stronger ties to professional outlets that could help distribute student work. In its early months, FCN has covered school absenteeism in Bridgeport, a fight over a power line that threatened a historic church, social media’s toll on youth mental health, the use of facial recognition technology in retail settings and a Sacred Heart poll on gambling and trust in professional sports. Each story carries a student byline.

Through a collaboration with WSHU Public Radio, Sacred Heart students work alongside Peabody- and Murrow-honored journalists as fellows and interns, contributing to regional coverage. SCMA faculty produce FCN content through their classes, and WSHU selects student video stories that meet its editorial standards. Student work also airs through a partnership
with WICC Radio, focused on Bridgeport, while FCN content is distributed on News 12’s streaming platforms across its regional network. A class assignment can end up on public radio, commercial radio, or television.

“We’re not asking students to play journalist,” Castonguay says. “They’re doing the work. Their reporting is being published and broadcast beyond campus.”

Few people reflect that growth more clearly than Taciane Batista, who helped build Fairfield County News from the ground up as its senior news producer. Twelve years earlier, Batista arrived at Sacred Heart from São Paulo, Brazil, with experience in sports broadcasting and the hope of building a larger career in media. She earned two master’s degrees in successive years, one in sports communication & media and the other in journalism & media production, before joining the faculty as a part-time instructor. When the Press Forward grant came through, Batista became a fellow and took on a central role in launching Fairfield County News.

In January 2026, the Center for Community News at the University of Vermont named Batista a 2026 Champion, recognizing her national leadership in building news-academic partnerships. This year, Sacred Heart filled a new fulltime faculty position, following a national search, to connect teaching with the expansion of its community journalism work. Batista was hired into that role and now helps lead the University’s most visible journalism initiative.

Ann Marie Somma, a former Hartford Courant reporter and Press Forward Fellow, has been part of the effort since the Courier’s founding and now serves as FCN’s managing editor. Where her students once produced stories for a single-town paper, they now report for both the Courier and Fairfield County News, reaching readers and listeners across the region.

“They come to understand that local stories matter deeply,” Somma says of her students’ work. “They’re the stories that shape how people know their neighbors, their institutions, and their town or city.”

The team around them blends newsroom experience with academic purpose. As an award-winning former NBC News producer, I’m proud to act as a senior news producer-in-residence. Professor Gregory Golda serves as senior multimedia producer, and Keith Zdrojowy, SCMA’s engineer in charge and studio manager, built and maintains the websites for both the Courier and FCN.

The work is also beginning to draw on the storytelling strengths of other Sacred Heart programs. A new Documentary Corner on the FCN website will showcase work involving SCMA students and faculty, including Stolen Lives, a feature-length film on wrongful conviction and reentry; Flyway of Life, a wildlife documentary by SHU alumnus Tomas Koeck (’22, MA ’24); and Veterans’ Voices, an oral history series preserving the stories of Vietnam veterans. These projects can also serve as springboards for continued reporting. A student- and faculty-produced podcast featuring leaders of Fairfield County nonprofits is already underway.

The initiative is built to last because it is integrated throughout the SCMA curriculum. Students move through the newsroom as part of their education. New cohorts arrive each semester. Faculty and staff provide continuity. Reporting is supported not only by grants and partnerships but by the rhythms and resources of an academic institution.

“This isn’t a side project for us,” Castonguay says. “It’s part of how we teach media production and journalism, part of how faculty work and part of how the University serves the community.”

In June, the team behind the initiative will take its story abroad. Castonguay, Batista, Somma, and I will present at the 6th International Media Literacy Research Symposium at John Cabot University in Rome, arguing that university-anchored newsrooms are not only a response to the local news crisis but also a form of applied media literacy, one in which students learn to navigate information by producing it responsibly and in service of their communities.

They will not be going alone. Grillo, whose story on AI and election misinformation remains on the FCN website, is now a Sacred Heart alumna and will join the delegation. Her reporting began as a class assignment; now she will help present the model on an international stage.

It is a long way from a shuttered weekly in a small Connecticut town to an international research symposium in Rome. But that distance reflects what can happen when a university decides the fate of local news is part of its civic mission. Grillo’s report is still reaching voters and educators who need it. Not long ago, that kind of reporting might have come only from a
traditional newsroom. Here, it carries the byline of a student and points to a different future for local journalism.

Joseph A. Alicastro, an Emmy-winning former NBC News producer who spent 30 years at the network, is an adjunct instructor at Sacred Heart University. He is a Press Forward Fellow and senior news producer-in-residence.