In their first year in the program, journalism graduate students relaunched the School of Communication and Journalism’s Osprey, a local news website, with associate professor Pablo Calvi.
The site was originally designed to give undergraduate students a more realistic experience of what it’s like to file stories for a deadline-driven publication. As part of the graduate program, students are now also responsible for creating multimedia components to the text-based publication.
“I think this is a testament to the kind of high quality experiential learning that we can offer here at Stony Brook,” said Calvi, who launched The Osprey and has overseen it since 2015. “The Osprey reaches sometimes up to 40,000 unique views on publication weeks. That’s a lot for a site of this kind, and it speaks to the role that this site has in Long Island, a region thatched with news deserts. As a university, through this class, we are giving back to our neighboring communities.”
The students work in teams, reporting on issues around Long Island. Together, they conduct interviews, shoot and edit video, and create at least two original stories every week.
“Our program is small and we’ve become very close. We initially bonded because we were all brand new to journalism, so we relied on each other’s support,” said Kelsie Radziski, of Bellmore. “That goes even further with reporting for The Osprey. We are all in sync with each other and work really well together. The other students in the class are science communication majors, and it’s been a fun experience reporting with them as well.”
Together, the students have explored several facets of life on Long Island, including how libraries are reclaiming a prominent community role after pandemic-imposed shutdowns, different spiritual ceremonies and practices, and a localized look at national economic woes.
“It’s wonderful to see The Osprey take flight again under Professor Calvi’s leadership,” said Laura Lindenfeld, dean of the School of Communication and Journalism and executive director of the Alda Center for Communicating Science. “This course, and The Osprey project, go a long way in giving our students a chance to build their skills and deploy them in a way that’s as close to the world of professional journalism as you can get in a classroom.”
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