B.J. Roche is a senior lecturer who teaches multimedia reporting, magazine writing and media entrepreneurship, as well as The Journalism Launchpad, a career-prep class for journalism majors. She also serves as internship coordinator, and as advisor to Amherstwire.com, the student-run digital publication that serves as a learning lab for journalism students. In 2017, “the Wire” won “Best Website” award from the College Media Association.
For more than two decades, B.J. served as western Massachusetts correspondent for The Boston Globe and the Boston Globe magazine. For six years, she wrote a weekly column for the Boston Sunday Globe New England section, and her blog Fiftyshift, a column about life after 50, appeared for two years on Boston.com Community Voices. She’s also written for Design New England, Yankee Magazine, and Commonwealth Magazine.
She has also written extensively about travel for The Boston Globe and other publications, including chapters on Massachusetts for two travel guides: Hidden New England and the Berlitz Guide to New England.
B.J. was named 2017 New England Journalism Educator of the Year by the New England Newspaper and Press Association. In 2013, she received the Outstanding Teacher Award from the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences. She was named as a Coleman Fellow for the teaching of entrepreneurship in 2015. She also was selected as a fellow for the Scripps Howard Journalism Entrepreneurship Institute at the Cronkite School in 2013.
She is a graduate of UMass Amherst, and lives with her family in a small hilltown in Franklin County. A sampling of her wide-ranging work can be found on her website.