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River Simard wrote an investigative piece on electronic Soofa signs in Brookline, Massachusetts, revealing the digital advertising signs collect data from pedestrian’s phones without residents' knowledge. The Orwellian technology soon became the talk of the town, and views of Simard’s article skyrocketed until it became the most read on the website.

Simard, a rising junior at Brandeis University, said he was thankful for the opportunity to work directly in Brookline and to be a conduit of information because he feels that Brookline residents had a right to know about this data collection.

“From what I've seen this past semester with Brookline News is that by prioritizing giving your community a source of information, it allows for the community to thrive better,” said Simard. “The goal was just to have as many people receive the information as possible, we succeeded in that.”

Simard wrote the article through a partnership between Neil Swidey’s Reinventing Journalism course at Brandeis and Brookline.News.

Neil Swidey, director of the journalism program at Brandeis University is proud of Simard's work. He credits him with using his fresh perspective to call attention to concerns that may have been overlooked otherwise.

“It's a great example of what local journalism does best — letting people know what's really going on literally around them in their pockets,” said Swidey.
Swidey has reinvented the Reinventing Journalism course many times over each spring semester but the core goal of the course has always been to offer students the foundations of journalism along with a survey of new approaches to reporting.

“In journalism we move more quickly than a lot of people in higher education, because we're used to that newsroom mentality of testing and learning and getting things going and piloting them, and that's helped us grow very rapidly in the four years since I've been at Brandeis,” said Swidey.

This spring, Swidey launched a new partnership through the Reinventing Journalism course where student journalists visited the newsroom every week to work on stories for the local digital start-up Brookline.News. Students also took the initiative to produce other content like instagram reels for the outlet such as a feature piece on a in Brookline.

“One of the great things about this has been the exchange of ideas,” said Swidey. “We've put together a really great group of eager, diverse students from all over the world who are interested and thirsty for knowledge and experience.”

Striving to offer students real newsroom experiences and ensure equity for students, Swidey received an internal grant from the Center for Community Partnership and Civic Transformation (COMPACT), as well as an external grant from the Cumming Foundation to fund transportation, food, and any other costs related to reporting in the field.

“We were interested not only in collaboration with Brookline.News and everything that it would offer our students, but we're also interested in the development of the model because we found where Brandeis is located is a news desert,” said Sara Stostak, inaugural director of COMPACT. “This is a program that’s doing incredibly important community engagement work.”

Ellen Clegg, chair of the Brookline.News steering committee, said the partnership was not only invaluable for the students and the outlet, but for the future of the fourth estate.

“The journalism industry is essential to democracy. Fact-based news reporting, especially on a local level, supplies the kind of information necessary for civic engagement,” said Clegg. “Student journalists are an essential part of the equation. We need to create the next generation of journalists.”

Sam Mintz said the student visits to the newsroom were a needed respite from his busy schedule and helped bring new life to his work as an editor and reporter.

“Thursday evenings became my favorite time of the week because it was a chance to  take a break from how I think about my job normally. It was motivating and inspiring to work with these younger students,” said Mintz. “It was just a very positive environment.”

The Reinventing Journalism course is not the only innovative enterprise of the journalism program at Brandeis University. An external internship in a newsroom is required for journalism students at Brandeis, and Rachel Raczka, assistant director of internships and outreach and adjunct professor of journalism, helps students find resources for these placements, often at local papers.

“We wanted students to have hands-on experience in a newsroom particularly because one of the tenants that we uphold is this idea of good standards for community journalism,” said Raczka. “It's really important to instill in our students that they should be up with local news ... so, even if students don't go on to be journalists, they might go on to be much more informed readers and consumers of the news and supporters of local news in their own communities.”

Raczka teaches the journalism course component of the internship requirement, where she tasks students each semester with producing a magazine full of articles, art, poems, and other graphics highlighting community resources and goings-on of Waltham. The initiative is student directed as Raczka places students in all roles of the magazine production processes based on their skills and interests. She also asks them each semester to consider their audience and focus the content of the magazine based on the needs and interests of young Waltham residents.

“Journalism should be a service to [the community]. Journalism should provide them with things that enrich their lives and educate them, and I think the main goal for me in that particular class is to really change the perspective of what people's expectations are of journalism,” said Raczka.

Through support from Waltham Partnership for Youth, Raczka was able to publish both English and Spanish language editions of the magazine and distribute the magazine to youth and families in Waltham, Massachusetts.

Both Swidey and Raczka are the key to the success of the experiential journalism programs at Brandeis, according to Heidi Starr, a volunteer site-visitor at the Cummings Foundation.

“Rachel and Neil come from the news world, so they bring real-life experience, and I think they're a terrific team,” said Star.

The partnership between Brookline.News and the Reinventing Journalism course gave rise to two students interning for Brookline.News over the summer, and Swidey and Raczka are working to sustain and integrate the opportunities offered by the Journalism program at Brandeis. As the initiatives continue to evolve, students reap the rewards. Simard found the benefit of the partnership has been two-fold.

“If you're planning on going into journalism, clips matter and experience matters,” said Simard. “I think the larger benefit is just the experience being able to actually see the cause and effect of the work we're doing, and also being able to better understand the way that reporting impacts the community."