In 2020, Sacred Heart University’s School of Communication, Media and the Arts (SCMA) took over the Easton Courier, a non-profit, digitally published newspaper of Easton, Conn. The Easton Courier is a partnership between the SCMA and residents of Easton.
Co-editor and News Director for the Easton Courier, Prof. James Castonguay said he collaborated with other faculty members of the SCMA to launch the Easton Courier.
“I partnered with several SCMA faculty members, including Ann Marie Somma, Nancy Doniger, Jane Paley, Rick Falco and Keith Zdrojowy, to revive the Easton Courier as a non-profit digital news outlet that offers a powerful experiential education for SHU students,” said Castonguay.
A photo featured in the Easton Courier titled “Farm Scene.”
Photo by Roderike Pohl, Easton Courier
Prof. Richard Falco, Photo Editor for the Easton Courier, said the newspaper allows students to enhance their resume and get a chance to practice journalism outside of SHU. Falco and other SCMA faculty members who contribute to the Easton Courier, have led their students to receive multiple awards from the Connecticut Society of Professional Journalism.
“The Easton Courier offers a lot of opportunities for students to develop a portfolio and work in journalism on a professional level. This gives students opportunities on two levels; the photojournalism class and the writing class are both contributors to the Easton Courier and complement one another,” said Falco. “Easton community members also contribute to the paper and we’ve gotten really great responses from them.”
Prof. Ann Marie Somma, the Co-Executive Editor of the Easton Courier teaches the CM-331 class, Topics in Journalism. Topics in Journalism gives students the opportunity to write for the Easton Courier.
“The Easton Courier means a lot to me because SHU stepped in and basically gave the community a newspaper where there was a void. I understand the power of journalism, and I understand how it’s really important as far as giving people information about their community and telling stories about people in their community,” said Somma.
Senior reporter for the Easton Courier, Theresa Tartamella, wrote for Spectrum first and then joined Topics in Journalism. Tartamella said Topics in Journalism provided hands-on experience and allowed her to improve skills necessary for news-writing.
“This class provides students with hands-on experience in newspaper writing, allowing me to cover a wide range of topics and speak with various people outside of Sacred Heart which has helped me grow my interviewing and writing skills,” said Tartamella.
Junior Emma Ricotta, Assistant Campus Life Editor for the Spectrum and Junior reporter for the Easton Courier, said that writing for the Easton Courier has granted her new experiences, and gave her an appreciation for Easton, Conn.
“I realized its importance when I had this story about a fourth grader and she created an invention for her school project and she was able to win all these awards nationally, and is now working with a lawyer to make her invention into a real thing,” said Ricotta. “I think that interviewing her in-person and seeing her tell her story was such a cool experience. Even though she was just in fourth grade, learning more about a community that I wasn’t raised into is a really cool experience.”
To stay up to date with the Easton Courier, view their published articles through their website, at https://eastoncourier.news/.
