To help connect us to college leadership and brainstorm strategy
In August, the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism launched our new statewide, independent news outlet, HorizonMass. Among the publication’s innovations is that it is largely student-run—meaning we have a crew of reporting, design, marketing, and (for the first time) editorial interns helping to produce it.
However, while most BINJ interns working on HorizonMass are college students currently doing informal internships with us as volunteers, it is the goal of our staff and board to reach out to the leadership of the institutions of higher learning that our interns attend and ask them to devote development staff time to working with us to raise money to provide as many paid formal internships with HorizonMass as possible each academic term going forward.
While it would be ideal if we could just call up deans, provosts, and presidents and make that happen, my BINJ colleagues and I understand that’s not how the world works. Therefore, we think the next best thing is for us to recruit professors (and other staffers in the know) to help us navigate the complex bureaucracies that typical American colleges have become in the last half century. And ultimately help us win support from campus leaders for HorizonMass at speed.
We can also use the advisory board as a brain trust on all matters strategic … and, for journalism and writing professors that decide to participate, it would be great if they sent us their best students’ news articles written for their classes to publish in HorizonMass each term—expanding the relevance and reach of our new publication in the process.
So, I’m writing to invite professors from colleges around Massachusetts to join our new HorizonMass Advisory Board. The commitment will be light for all participants. We’ll just ask people that join the board to attend quarterly two-hour meetings (by Google Meet) and keep in touch on a purpose-built email list between meetings.
Interested professors can contact me at execdir@binjonline.org for more info on the board and to sign up. Folks with key staff positions at area colleges (especially development specialists and top administrators) or those with strong nonprofit fundraising backgrounds are also invited to volunteer.
This editorial was produced for HorizonMass, the independent, student-driven, news outlet of the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism, and is syndicated by BINJ’s MassWire news service.
Jason Pramas is editor-in-chief of HorizonMass and executive director of the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism.
