Tom Robbins is the second distinguished journalist to occupy the post at Hunter College, established to honor Newfield. Robbins, a former colleague of Newfield's at both the Voice and the Daily News, will teach a course entitled "Urban Investigative Reporting" and will also assist students in researching and writing a lengthy article or series of articles focused on an aspect of city life. "Whether tomorrow's journalists are writing online or on paper, we need more of them who understand and share Jack Newfield's passion for justice and the city he lived in," Robbins says in a press release.
Hunter College in New York City has selected Wayne Barrett to receive the inaugural Jack Newfield Visiting Professorship in Journalism. Newfield was an investigative journalist at the Voice from 1964 to 1988; he died of cancer in 2004. On the school's Web site, Hunter President Jennifer J. Rabb said, "As Jack Newfield's colleague at the Voice and an investigative journalist in his own right, Wayne Barrett brings a unique insight to Hunter students. They will learn from one of New York's best reporters how journalists can continually rediscover, and tell the story, of the drama of a great city remaking itself again and again."
In September, two media entrepreneurs launched U Weekly, an arts and entertainment paper for students at Ohio State University. As reported in the New York Times, U Weekly has faced resistance from university officials and from Ohio State's traditional, student-run newspaper, The Lantern. The Lantern's faculty advisor comes off as savvy, however, remarking that "competition in journalism is good because it raises the bar and gets folks thinking about how to differentiate publications from others." U Weekly's owners have successfully launched college weeklies in Baton Rouge, La., and Lexington, Ky., but Columbus already has two alternative weeklies with entertainment coverage: The Other Paper and Columbus Alive.
