About Us

As a digital portal, the New England Ethnic Newswire strives to be not just a window, but a door. We hope to bring together the following siloed elements of our region: voices from different ethnic groups and cultures; the best stories from more than 100 ethnic media of New England; teens and student journalists, teachers and coaches from UMass Boston and the local mainstream media; news consumers of all kinds; research; links to community, business and government resources; and opportunities to connect across our cultures. We hope that with new insights and information from NEWz, you will be inspired to take a more active role in your own neighborhoods and communities, in the nation and the "global village."

Each week we will offer you not only the best ethnic news stories and opinions in New England, but also a chance to comment on individual stories and issues in our Speak Up section, the community blogs, and in comment areas following each story. Youth voices have a special place at NEWz - under our Teen site.

Who are the ethnic media?

See our Ethnic Media Database for New England, with contacts and other information about the region's very diverse media outlets. Research about ethnic media is collected for you, and original research on regional African-American, Latino and other ethnic media has been done by the NEWz team.

We send a headline summary email out each week to policy-makers and subscribers, alerting them to new content. Click here to subscribe to this email.

STAFF

Publisher
Ellen Hume supervises the NEWz project, which she created in 2006 with ethnic media leaders from Greater Boston. A former executive director of Harvard University's Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, she has taught at UMass Boston, where she founded the Center on Media and Society in 2004 as part of the McCormack Graduate School. Ellen is currently research director of the Center for Future Civic Media at MIT. She has more than 30 years of journalism and teaching experience that includes working as a White House and political correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, reporter for the Los Angeles Times, Detroit Free Press, Santa Barbara News Press and Somerville (MA.) Journal, and various radio stations, television networks and magazines. Her work can be seen at www.ellenhume.com. Contact Ellen here

Editor in Chief

Frank Herron oversees the journalistic work of the New England Ethnic Newswire. He teaches in the political science and communication studies departments at UMass Boston. He has a master's degree in media studies from Syracuse University and a bachelor's degree in history from Cornell University. He worked as an editor and staff writer for more than 18 years at The Post-Standard newspaper in Syracuse, N.Y., and taught newswriting as an adjunct instructor at Syracuse University's Newhouse School of Public Communications for 13 years. Contact Frank here

Editor

M. Thang is the editor of New England Ethnic News and a Boston-based writer who covers multicultural issues, health and media. Her stories have appeared in the Tufts University Health & Nutrition Letter, Sampan newspaper, New America Media and other web sites. Contact Mary here

Senior Editor

Kenneth J. Cooper is a senior advisor, contributor and coach to the NEWz project. He is a freelance journalist who was national editor of the Boston Globe, where he shared a Pulitzer Prize in 1984 for reporting on racism in Boston. He also served as the South Asia Bureau Chief and national education writer for the Washington Post. He is a 2006-7 fellow at the Center on Media and Society, home of NEWz. He wrote NEWz' history of African American newspapers in New England. Contact Ken here

Webmaster

Charlotte Corbett is the lead designer and webmaster of NEWz. She is a freelance web consultant who specializes in making websites accessible to all people, including those with special needs. She teaches "Technology & Special Education" and "Advanced Computer-based Training" at UMass Boston as an adjunct faculty member. She has a MA in Educational Technology Leadership from George Washington University. Contact Charlotte here

Administrative Coordinator

Nancy L Riordan is currently a MSPA international relations track candidate for 2007 at the University of Massachusetts Boston. She also holds a BA in globalization studies, created as an individual major. She has worked at the McCormack Graduate School's Center for Democracy and Development on the International Rule of Law Project and is currently assisting on the Center for Media and Society's ethnic news project. Her academic research has highly utilized and documented both domestic and international multi-media sources for issues related to trade, human rights, and unresolved conflicts in the Middle East. Her interest in the ethnic news project is based not only in the significant role ethnic media plays in the domestic sphere (both locally and nationally) but also the importance of the interplay of linkages to and from the international realm. Contact nancy here

Publishing Team:

Adam Smith, Henry Rafael (research and outreach), Hitesh Hathi (project development), Bill Forry (project development), Ed Fouhy (project development), Jodi Tatiana Charles (events), Darek Barcikowski (project development), Lillian Chan (web design), Jennifer Zhang (publicity), Irene Yukhnananov (website development).