By Autumn Crabtree
When Mario A. Murillo, Professor and Vice Dean of the Lawrence Herbert School of Communication at Hofstra University, was first hired at the university, the Herbert School was in its early stages of development. Due to his radio journalism background, Murillo was originally brought on to develop the university’s academic program in radio and audio production, but in his time at the school he has played a number of other roles, both in and out of the classroom. Most recently, in his administrative role, he has been collaborating closely with the team of faculty and student staff devoted to establishing and growing The Long Island Advocate, the school’s online hyperlocal news site.
Professor Murillo is also involved with WRHU, the university’s award-winning community-licensed radio station run primarily by students. There is a wide range of programming broadcast on WRHU, but the two main news programs include News Line, a half hour daily afternoon drive-time newscast, and Morning Wake Up Call, a variety talk show that includes in-depth interviews with guests and discussion of local and regional news. Over the past few years, the students have focused on developing the local news side further to fill gaps in local reporting.
“WRHU, along with doing sports and music and all sorts of other programming, has a pretty big news department. A lot of students in broadcast journalism, journalism, and other disciplines have gotten involved in producing and reporting and doing local news,” Murillo said.
Today, both WRHU and the Long Island Advocate are strong examples of student-led community journalism initiatives covering the many underserved neighborhoods surrounding Hofstra University.
The Long Island Advocate was launched in 2020 as a replacement to a site called The Long Island Report. This site was a place where journalism students could practice producing pieces in an online platform. While the site was helpful for students to get hands on experience, it was only active when courses were developing content and thus was not truly serving the community. Murillo and the Dean of the Herbert School, Mark Lukasiewicz, noticed this gap, and mapped out ways to create a more active, productive news site with members of the journalism faculty. This initiative came out of a desire to better serve their local community given the lack of coverage of the local area in other news media. Thus, the Long Island Advocate was born. This site not only gives students practice, but serves a gap in local reporting.
“We do have the resources to fill some of that gap. So, in recognizing that we've got to get the curriculum component connected to this project, we also have to make sure it's going to have a resonance in the community,” Murillo said.
The Long Island Advocate site is led by assistant professor of journalism Scott Brinton, who serves as the executive editor and primary faculty advisor. Before coming to Hofstra, he served as executive editor at the local community news group Herald Community Newspapers, and as a photographer for the New York Times.
Brinton was asked to take on his role as editor due to these former leadership positions in community news. While the establishment of The Advocate was the result of a lot of planning and devotion of resources from the Dean’s office, Brinton has played a crucial role.
Brinton works with students throughout the semester to prepare their stories. He is the main editor, along with teaching an Advanced Reporting class that contributes heavily to the web page.
“I tell them at the very beginning of the semester that my goal is to get as many of you published online on The Advocate as possible,” said Brinton.
Many of the students have never reported off campus so Brinton helps them prepare to go off campus and report on local events such as community board meetings, school board meetings, and other local investigative journalism. The university also has a partnership with ABC News, which aired a story Hofstra students worked on about the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Sandy, along with training students on how to do broadcast work.
The site has gathered support from students, faculty, and the university as a whole. It was launched right before COVID so had a slow start, but as time has passed, students and faculty have become more involved.
“Initially some faculty were resistant to the idea of creating an online full media outlet, thinking that it wasn't sustainable, it wasn't going to happen. But slowly, there has been more buy in,” Murillo said.
The site receives contributions from undergraduate and graduate students, along with a range of newsworthy commentary from a diverse array of community members. As students have become more involved, they have begun to produce content both in their for-credit classes and on their own time, as an extra-curricular reporting experience.
When the site began, it used a basic Medium-based platform. But as it got more popular, Brinton wanted to switch to a more flexible, dynamic web platform. With help from an independent web designer and developer, Hofstra was able to provide funding. The university also provided funding for Brinton and two students to attend and report on the Shinnecock Nation Pow Wow this summer, the first pow wow that was open to the public since the beginning of the pandemic.
“Students are into it, definitely. We were hoping that that would be the case once it got it legs,” Murillo said.