Barbara Selvin, MS
Associate Professor Emerita
Contact Prof. Selvin
Barbara Selvin became the School's first full-time professor in 2007 after helping to design what was then the first School of Journalism in the SUNY system and after seven years as an adjunct instructor in Stony Brook's former journalism minor. She previously taught journalism at Queens College and Hofstra University and directed a high school summer journalism workshop at CUNY for six years.
At Stony Brook, Selvin taught a wide variety of courses, including reporting and news writing at all levels, the economics of news in the digital age, grammar, and numeracy for journalists. She led or co-led trips to Kenya, Bangalore, and Ecuador with the School's Journalism without Walls program. She served as the School's director of internships and careers and the faculty governance lead for journalism.
Selvin's research interests include community journalism, particularly weekly newspapers; women in journalism; and journalism education in the digital age.
Before she became an educator, Selvin was a reporter for weekly newspapers on Long Island; for The Advocate in Stamford, Connecticut; and for Newsday and New York Newsday. At the New York paper, she covered economic development, commercial real estate and housing, and she wrote a biweekly real estate column. She spent a year writing about healthcare reform, medical research and sexuality for the paper's health and science desk on Long Island.
Her freelance work has been published on poynter.org and in Newsday, the New York Times, Columbia Journalism Review, Grassroots Editor and business and healthcare magazines.
Selvin graduated from SUNY Binghamton with a bachelor's in English and earned a master's degree at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, where she received the Pulitzer Traveling Fellowship.
Selvin is a member of Investigative Reporters and Editors, Journalism and Women's Symposium, and the International Society of Weekly Newspaper Editors.