SHU’s Journalism Program Restores Town’s Local News Source

Faculty and students lead rebirth of Easton Courier two years after newspaper closes

At a time when thousands of community newspapers across the country have closed, Sacred Heart University has reopened one. The Easton Courier, which shut down two years ago, is now a well-read, nonprofit, online news site published through a partnership between the town of Easton and SHU.

Easton, a small town near SHU’s campus, lost its local newspaper after 38 years of publication when financial woes that have plagued the news industry forced the owner to close it at the end of 2018. In early 2020, SHU’s journalism program resurrected the Easton Courier and moved it to a free, online platform, instantly filling the town’s news void with reporting and editing by SHU journalism students, faculty and community contributors. Today, as the site approaches its one-year anniversary, its news content and readership continue to grow.

“Bringing back the Easton Courier is about community engagement but, on a bigger scale, it’s about improving democracy,” said James Castonguay, professor and director of SHU’s School of Communication, Media & the Arts. “There’s a crisis in democracy when local papers go out of business; there’s no local source of information. The role of local journalism is to inform residents so they can understand what is going on in their community.”

A quarter of the nation’s newspapers–nearly 2,100–have closed since 2004, according to a 2020 study by the Hussman School of Journalism and Media at the University of North Carolina. The closures include 70 daily papers and more than 2,000 weeklies and non-dailies. “About 1,800 of the communities that have lost a paper since 2004 do not have easy access to any local news source–such as a local online news site or a local radio station,” the report states.

Castonguay said community news is more important now than ever before, because large, regional papers lack the time and resources to cover local government meetings, where town leaders and residents vote on important issues. He said local papers also unite communities because they feature stories about noteworthy residents, remind people when fairs and festivals take place, announce community programs and events, inform residents about impending storms and health matters and enable readers to share their opinions with their neighbors.

Rebirth of the town’s news source

In late 2018, Castonguay recognized Easton’s profound need for local news and information, and reached out to Nancy Doniger, an adjunct professor at SHU and the original editor of the Easton Courier. Doniger also worked for years as managing editor at the Courier’s parent company and as a correspondent for The New York Times. 

Doniger and Castonguay’s vision was to restart the Easton Courier as a non-profit, community journalism project that would also provide an experiential learning opportunity for SHU students. The duo consulted with Easton leaders and residents and assembled a team of faculty members, including Keith Zdrojowy, Rick Falco, Jane Paley, Taci Batista and Ann Marie Somma. They had three community meetings about reviving the Easton Courier and received overwhelming enthusiasm and support. Ideas from Easton residents formed the basis of the community news project’s priorities.

The new Easton Courier launched on Feb. 29, 2020, two weeks before the coronavirus pandemic shut down schools, businesses and almost all activities of daily life. Three Easton residents wrote full-length feature articles about the new venture, one of them after its four-month anniversary.

The Easton Courier website includes articles about town government, local events, education, the environment, wildlife and pets, sports, the town’s history and other matters that are important to local residents. The site is on track to publish more than 1,000 articles by the end of its first year, and Google Analytics shows increased page views and consistent readership growth.

“The Easton Courier offers a wonderful, educational experience for our students while providing the town with a reliable news source,” Castonguay said. “Creating this community journalism project was a way for Sacred Heart and the town of Easton to give residents back their hometown news.”

The pandemic didn’t stop the real-world learning initiative for students and community writers. If anything, the pandemic bolstered the Courier as an authentic laboratory for student learning and returned a trusted news source to Easton at a time when it was needed the most, Castonguay said.

“The Easton community truly missed having a local newspaper, so this was the perfect opportunity to recreate the Easton Courier, giving SHU students hands-on experience and keeping residents informed about the news that affects their town, and the services and social events available to them,” said Doniger.

Faculty guides student journalists

Castonguay and Doniger co-teach a course on professional journalism that is connected to the publication. Their students write articles, take photos and produce multimedia news segments for the Easton Courier, affording them the opportunity to build their portfolios and contribute meaningful content under the guidance of experienced professionals.

“Our student writers and photojournalists provide quality content for the Easton Courier,” Doniger said. “They cover hard news, events, trends, sports and nature, an important part of life in Easton, where roughly 60% of the town is preserved in perpetuity as open space.”

Tomas Koeck ’22 contributed numerous photos and articles, including a Sunday nature walk series and an exceptional piece, “Nature’s Heroes,” which he worked on for months, profiling Connecticut Audubon Society board members. Chris Regan ’23 worked with Koeck to cover a town party and fireworks to celebrate Easton’s 175th anniversary. Regan also wrote about the pressing need for a new building to house the Easton Emergency Medical Service, a historic cemetery tour and the regional health district Easton recently joined.

Daniel Gardella ’21 wrote about the pandemic’s heavy toll on high school and youth sports and about a new baseball field, while Asia McCray ’21 wrote articles about how the pandemic impacted holiday celebrations in Easton. Graduate journalism student Neil Grasso published interviews he conducted with former Easton resident David Carroll, who is featured in the Netflix documentary The Great Hack. The film explores the scandal involving social media giant Facebook and the misuse of data by the consulting firm Cambridge Analytica during the 2016 election.

“Our spring semester professional journalism class has filled up, which reflects the growing enthusiasm for our community journalism project,” said Doniger. “We look forward to building on our successful efforts to expand local news coverage and, by extension, to improve the health of our democracy.”

Though the original Easton Courier was a paid-subscription paper, it is now free to all readers at eastoncourier.news. Donations, which help support the community journalism project, can be made at this website.

Pictured above: Tomas Koeck, left, and Dan Gardella