Meet the Team: The NELA Neighborhood Reporting Partnership signs up new members

By T.A. Hendrickson and Matthew Reagan

Thirteen student journalists from Occidental College have been selected to participate this semester in the NELA Neighborhood Reporting Partnership — a professional collaboration between the Boulevard Sentinel and The Occidental campus newspaper to bolster coverage of Northeast Los Angeles. 

Under the partnership, which launched in October 2020, participants will co-publish articles in the Sentinel and The Occidental, providing essential, bilingual local news coverage to residents of Eagle Rock, Highland Park, Glassell Park, Cypress Park, Mt. Washington and Elysian Valley. The participants will cover beats including  COVID-19, education, transportation, business and workers, local politics, social issues and social justice. 

The team leaders from Oxy — Matthew Reagan, a senior; Indie Lau, a junior; and Zach Goodwin, a senior — will work with Teresa Hendrickson, the editor of the Boulevard Sentinel, to develop and edit stories for co-publication.

Hendrickson, an Eagle Rock native who was a member of the editorial board of The New York Times from 2004 to 2017, has edited the Sentinel since 2018.

Reagan, a founding editor of the NELA Neighborhood Reporting Partnership, is a Community News editor at The Occidental. Lau is also an Occidental Community News editor. Goodwin, a former news editor at The Occidental, will coordinate the partnership’s four-person Spanish translation team.

The NELA Neighborhood Reporting Partnership has gotten off to a good start. The Sentinel and The Occidental recently co-published a story in English and Spanish about local vaccine education. The partnership also broke the news recently about a plan by the area’s city councilmember to build prefab mini-shelters for the homeless in NELA. Other co-published articles include coverage of local mail operations in the run-up to the presidential election, COVID-19 resources, developments at Scholl Canyon, food deliveries to the needy in NELA, and the pandemic’s impact on NELA’s book stores and other small businesses. The partnership has also increased coverage of local politicians, including U.S Rep. Jimmy Gomez, City Councilmember Kevin de León and others.

Have a tip? You can submit a tip to the NELA Neighborhood Reporting Partnership by contacting The Occidental’s Community News editors here.

T.A. Hendrickson

Editor at Boulevard Sentinel | Website

T.A. Hendrickson, a native of Eagle Rock, is the editor of the Boulevard Sentinel and a former member of the Editorial Board of the New York Times.