A “win-win” partnership brings a surge of reporting firepower to hyperlocal news outlets around Boston

A Boston student journalism program is giving hyperlocal newsrooms what they want. And what they really, really want? Reported, ready-to-go stories they can trust.

Bright-eyed students need real-world journalism experience and a bevy of clips. Resource-strapped local news organizations — many operating without full-time paid reporters — need polished pieces that don’t require a lot of time-consuming edits. Editors at these hyperlocal outlets rarely have the time to handhold new reporters or shape unsolicited end-of-semester submissions into workable pieces of news.

Putting all those together, Boston University has pioneered a win-win student journalism program that’s bringing a surge of reporting power to dozens of local news outlets in and around Boston. The metropolitan area, haunted by “ghost newspapers” hollowed out by the newspaper chain Gannett, has seen a wave of new hyperlocal startups in recent years. All of which could use additional on-the-ground journalists.

The BU Newsroom addresses common complaints of working with student journalists in two key ways:

• Outlets only get stories they commission or approve. They get articles throughout the semester, too, not just a dump of pieces filed near finals.
• Each student-written piece arrives fully edited by a professional editor and ready to publish. Stories arrive fact-checked and vetted with headlines, artwork, photo captions, dotted i’s, and crossed t’s.

The local news partnership piloted as a single 18-student class taught by former Boston Globe editor Brian McGrory and former Portland Press Herald executive editor and Globe alum Steve Greenlee last semester. Now the program includes 61 students across four reporting classes and one photojournalism class. There are plans to add additional classes focused on data journalism, accountability and investigative journalism, and audience engagement. (BU also makes legislative coverage available to local news outlets by running the largest news operation in the Massachusetts Statehouse.)

Local newsrooms have published 365 student-written pieces since the program launched in January 2025. Both Greenlee and McGrory proudly mentioned the program’s perfect take rate; so far, none of their stories have been rejected by local newsrooms. Students are covering the tumultuous biotech scene in Cambridge, key issues in municipal elections in Belmont, community greenhouses in Dorchester, and more.

The student journalists, local newsrooms, and news stories all benefit from seasoned editing. Local publishers credit the indefatigable Greenlee, in particular, with getting pieces over the finish line as polished as possible. At a class late in the spring semester — in the same building that houses the BU-owned WBUR — students recounted Greenlee helping them land a newsy angle, a live blog that turned into a fully fledged story, and successfully pitching a follow-up story to a local editor. McGrory complimented one on an evocative lede about a reenactment of the Midnight Ride of William Dawes and another on a rewrite that gracefully avoided his pet peeve: “the schmaltzy nut graf.”

“We’re really closely coordinating the assignments with the outlets to make sure we do the journalism they want. We don’t do any stories that editors don’t want,” Greenlee told me this month. “With Scott [Farwell], I’m editing these stories to a professional standard. I’m not babying them. I hold these stories to the same standards that I would hold stories at The Boston Globe to. That means some of them are going through eight, nine, ten rounds of edits.”

Greenlee noted BU made “a real commitment to this program” not only by hiring him, but by easing his teaching requirements so he could focus on editing the stories and holding one-on-one sessions with students. To be that closely edited is a rare privilege anywhere in media these days, and especially in student journalism.

There are 31 local independent news publishing partners — including many startup digital and nonprofit newsrooms — in the network. These include the digital-only nonprofit Brookline.News, the community paper Dorchester Reporter, the months-old Gotta Know Medford, and the free weekly newspaper The Concord Bridge. The program has sparked wider interest in New England, but the journalism department has limited participation to neighborhoods and towns accessible by public transit or a manageable Uber ride from campus.

Ultimately, BU wants to build up “the best network of independent local news organizations in the country right here in Greater Boston,” McGrory said. The university recently hired a part-time executive director (local news advocate and former state rep Lori Ehrlich) and a part-time audience engagement specialist (Globe alum Jason Tuohey) to work with the local news cohort thanks to a Barr Foundation grant. Members of the local newsroom cohort learn from the editors, staff, and — maybe most importantly, says McGrory — each other.

“What we’re really trying to do is drive collaboration, maybe even some consolidation, and best practices all around,” McGrory said.

McGrory is a longtime Boston journalist who came to the university fresh off the biggest journalism job in the city as top editor of The Boston Globe. He didn’t attend journalism school himself, and says the first time he set foot in a journalism class was when he started teaching at BU two years ago.

“My own view is that the absolute best way to learn journalism is by doing journalism,” McGrory said. “That’s what we’re trying to do — push kids right into the fire, and have them learn journalism, in real time, in real ways. We think that’s going to serve our students well, and that’s going to serve the organizations that we’re trying to help well.”

McGrory recounted watching local newspaper chains, primarily Gannett, hollow out, consolidate, and ultimately shutter their own news organizations across the region. The Globe, undergoing its own painful transition to digital in those years, was not in a position to step up and fill the gaps.

“My experience with the Globe was that we had to pull out of hyperlocal business. We simply couldn’t afford it anymore, and we regretted having to do that very, very much,” McGrory said. “We didn’t have the resources to place reporters in every region or every town, as necessary as that is to the life of the communities.”

As in other parts of the country, it’s disproportionately been an older generation of journalists that has stepped up to lead hyperlocal outlets in Massachusetts. Many are finding themselves leading digital hyperlocal newsrooms after long careers in legacy newspapers. In addition to hiring the part-time audience specialist and executive director, the Boston University journalism program is holding regular training sessions for leaders of these hyperlocal news startups.

“One of the things that has really worried me is that we have a lot of retired, longtime journalists who are doing really good work to launch news organizations in their communities, but what they don’t understand is what audiences want now,” McGrory said. “That is one of the driving reasons that we set up these day-long trainings to make them fully appreciate that this isn’t the 1990s or early 2000s anymore. We know a lot more about the people who are reading us, and we know more about how to attract them to our coverage.”

Editor Carol Beggy had worked for The Arlington Advocate early in her career. Like many Gannett-owned newspapers in the area, the Advocate has lost its print edition, merged, and been gutted in the years since. (The weekly newspaper’s social accounts have been dormant for three years and its homepage now redirects to a generic regional site called Wicked Local.) After several years at the Globe, Beggy returned to hyperlocal journalism in the Massachusetts town to run YourArlington, a nonprofit news site founded in 2006.

Conscious of the ever-important portfolio to burgeoning journalistic careers, Beggy goes out of her way to give students non-grunt work and the opportunity to garner different types of clips. Beggy has been pleased with the quality of the editing from the BU program. Pieces show evidence of multiple rounds of edits and come in copy edited and complete down to artwork, photo captions, and headlines.

The program has been a godsend for the newsroom powered by just “one and a half” paid staffers and “a slew of volunteers,” she said.

“It is — in the simplest word — a gift,” she said. “It comes in and it’s ready to go.”

Beggy said readers have also been appreciative of what “fresh eyes” see in a story about something many locals overlook — as when student Kara Mihm wrote about a short, busy street or the school budget.

“If you can’t use your 40 years of experience, then use your newness, right?” Beggy said.

Over in the Boston suburb of Newton, veteran journalist and Newton Beacon editor Bryan McGonigle said one of the most popular pieces of the past summer emerged out of a BU student measuring local hot spots. He said loyal readers are surprised to hear some of their favorite bylines are students.

McGonigle is a one-man newsroom and the extra hands allow him to focus on more time-intensive stories.

“The quality has been amazing. It also allows me to focus on more in-depth reporting,” McGonigle said. “I don’t have to do, like, 10 stories at a time. It allows me to focus my coverage.”

Sam Mintz, editor of Brookline.News, said he’s been impressed with the professionalism and pace of the BU program. The nonprofit Brookline.News, launched in 2023, has two staff members covering the town of 63,000 — and relies on volunteers and freelancers to fill in the many gaps. While some student partnerships and freelance relationships take months to get off the ground, Mintz said he appreciates that the BU students file early and often throughout the semester.

“All of the nonprofit editors I talk to in our little circle are very excited to see where it goes,” Mintz said.