Sacred Heart University’s (SHU) community journalism collective (CJC) which four years ago resurrected the local newspaper, the Easton Courier, was recently awarded a $100,000 Press Forward Initiative grant to continue its community-based coverage in Easton while also expanding into the cities of Fairfield and Bridgeport, Connecticut.
Professor James Castonguay, SHU’s School of Communication, Media and the Arts director, is one of the leaders behind the Courier’s revival. Castonguay emphasized how important the grant is to the Courier, the CJC and the University. “One of the biggest challenges for a local newsroom is to become sustainable and grants are a significant way to get closer to that goal, especially for a nonprofit community newsroom like ours.”
Press Forward is a national philanthropic movement devoted to strengthening democracy by revitalizing local news and information. Funded by a coalition of over 20 major donors, including the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and the Knight Foundation and housed at The Miami Foundation, Press Forward aims to invest $500 million to strengthen communities through local news. It announced in April its first open call to fund efforts to “close the local coverage gap,” and awarded $20 million to 205 local newsrooms, at least one in every state, including the Courier. Learn more at pressforward.news/grantees.
Like many other local news outlets, in 2018 the weekly newspaper serving the nearby town of Easton was forced to close its doors. However, in 2020, Castonguay and other members of the university’s media, communication and journalism programs rescued and relaunched the Courier as an online source for local news. The Courier has since published thousands of stories from Sacred Heart students, faculty and community contributors.
The grant is a major milestone for the Courier and SHU’s involvement in the local community. “This funding will help us continue publishing award-winning content, expand the paper’s reach to include multimedia news and bring our successful, nonprofit educational partnership to Bridgeport and Fairfield,” Castonguay said.
The Courier is one of eight newsrooms affiliated with universities to have received a Press Forward grant, and its hands-on educational model not only provides immediate benefits to the surrounding community but also prepares students for future careers as professional journalists.
In an age when high-quality local journalism is at a premium, Castonguay is proud to be prominently involved with an outlet that prides itself on serving the community with only the most factual reporting.
“Easton is home to groups that frequently share information intended to shape voter opinion and influence policy. These efforts include petitions for special town meetings, lawsuits, letters to the editor, social media posts, email and texting campaigns, and townwide mailings, often distributed shortly before referendum votes,” Castonguay said. “The Courier has provided fact-based coverage of the issues and has become a trusted and reliable source for accurate news information.”
Since the revamp, the Courier has established itself again as a pillar for quality local reporting and news coverage. The new Easton Courier has won over 60 excellence-in-journalism awards from the Connecticut chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists since its relaunch.
As the second-largest Catholic university in New England and one of the fastest-growing private doctoral institutions in the U.S., Sacred Heart University is a national leader in shaping higher education for the 21st century.
