About Us

Howard University News Service (HUNS), established in 2001, trains student journalists to provide hyperlocal and national reporting to serve media deserts and address a severe lack of diverse news coverage. Led by senior-level journalism majors, students reporters cover multimedia stories under the supervision of professional journalists and professors in the Department of Media, Journalism and Film at Howard University.

HUNewsService.com is a destination website and wire service that provides free multimedia stories to news organizations. HUNS covers national and local issues and events in the Washington area, including Congress, the White House and U.S. Supreme Court, as well as issues of interest to multicultural audiences.

It serves a variety of collegiate and professional news partners. This includes Howard’s PBS affiliate WHUT, the Howard University Radio Network and the Black Press, which primarily consists of the 200 weeklies and websites that are members of the National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA), such as the Baltimore and Washington Afro-American, the Washington Informer, the Los Angeles Sentinel and the Chicago Defender.

HU News Service content has also been used by the Washington Post, the Washington Examiner, CNN iReport, California Black Media, BlackAmericaWeb.com, Human Nature magazine, Essence, Black Enterprise, Urban One, Heart & Soul magazine, Trentonian.com, the Chronicle of Higher Education, the Center for Community News at the University of Vermont and USDemocracyDay.org.

History

On Nov. 17, 2001, the former Department of Journalism at Howard University launched an online news and information source under the name BlackCollegeView.com as a successor to The Community News. The website became the anchor project for the department’s Converged Media Lab, created with the National Newspaper Publishers Association through one of the oldest professional-collegiate partnerships that now also includes the Trice-Edney News Wire. BlackCollegeView.com was relaunched as the Howard University News Service (HUNewsService.com) when it ramped up to cover the 2008 presidential election.

The HU News Service team has won numerous awards, including the Society of Professional Journalists’ Mark of Excellence Awards; Hearst Journalism Awards, the collegiate equivalent to the Pulitzer Prize; student Emmy Awards; National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) Salute to Excellence Awards; and multiple NABJ Student Chapter of the Year, Student of the Year and Educator of the Year awards.

The news service has been praised for its coverage of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the 2008 presidential election and the 2009 inauguration. The converged media team for the historic election produced more than 80 print articles, hundreds of photos, a dozen blogs, and 20 video and audio packages. Reporters who returned to their hometowns to vote, including New York, Chicago, Detroit and Wilmington, added a national dimension and provided real-time coverage of President-Elect Barack Obama’s victory speech, filing via cell phones and using Twitter. In some cases, the student journalists filed ahead of national news organizations.

In addition to the Republican National Convention and Democratic National Convention, converged teams have covered subsequent presidential and midterm elections, the lead crisis in Flint, Michigan; the unrest in Ferguson, Missouri; the Women’s March; milestone anniversaries of the March on Washington, Brown v. the Board of Education and the sit-in movement in Greensboro, North Carolina. “From Black Power to Black Sunday: Student Activism in the Nation’s Capital” was one of 14 student packages included in the “Eyes on the Prize” Black College New Media Project, underwritten by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Howard University has been  the leading producer of Black journalists and communicators since the inception of the School of Communications in  1971. USA Today and College Factual have ranked the journalism program among the top 20 nationally, and the National Association of Black Journalists ranked the program as No. 1 among HBCUs.

Terms of Use 

The Howard University News Service (HUNS) provides free multimedia stories to news outlets across the nation. The work of student journalists is edited and produced by professional journalists and professors in the Department of Media, Journalism and Film at the Cathy Hughes School of Communications. Their work is available for your use if the respective journalist(s) and HUNS are properly credited. Please share links for any content that you use for student portfolios.