Professor, students reach into poor neighborhoods with community paper
A JOURNALISM PROFESSOR AND A group of dedicated college students are reaching into impoverished New York City neighborhoods to provide them with newspaper coverage they wouldn't otherwise receive from bigger papers.
For the past two years, Bernard "Buddy" Stein, a journalism professor at Hunter College and publisher of the family-owned Riverdale Press, has been reaching into two of the city's poorest neighborhoods in the Bronx to cover issues that are important to them.
"Community newspapers serve New York City's affluent neighborhoods, but advertisers aren't interested in reaching people who have no money. So commercial newspapers don't reach poor communities," said Stein, winner of the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing. "Poor communities deserve that source of information and inspiration no less than affluent ones. ... That's where my students come in."
The Hunts Point Express serves the Hunts Point and Longwood neighborhoods of the South Bronx, with the dual purpose of giving journalism students real-world experiences while also providing often-ignored poor neighborhoods with a source of local news and a connection to each other.
The newspaper has served as both a source for information and a forum for residents to express their views. It has featured stories on a group of neighborhood kids who turned their graffiti art skills into a business with corporate clients, an exposé of the horrible living conditions at a group of Hunts Point apartment complexes, coverage of a march by residents seeking affordable housing, and a feature on the debate between a local congressman and an advocate for economic development on the benefits of a proposed industrial park.
All the stories are written with a uniquely human perspective, looking at problems from the citizens on up.
"The people there don't get their news from The New York Times," a high-ranking city official once told Stein. "They get it from you."
Right now, Stein is raising money to permit the newspaper to go monthly, and he has plans to found a second paper, to be staffed by students at the new City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism, to serve a neighboring South Bronx community.
To view the Hunts Point Express online, visit http://www.huntspointexpress.com/. To contact Stein or to support his community journalism projects, e-mail him at bstein@hunter.cuny.edu.