Antisemitism coverage earns Concord Bridge NENPA honors
The award “celebrates journalism that exposes injustice, drives reform, and uplifts the role of a free press in civic life.”
The Concord Bridge staff
The Concord Bridge’s revelatory, unflinching coverage of the town’s reckoning with acts of antisemitism has earned a prestigious Publick Occurrences Award from the New England Newspaper & Press Association.
The awards recognize the most outstanding journalism that New England newspapers produce each year.
The Bridge’s coverage began during Town Meeting 2025, when Municipal Reporter Dakota Antelman learned that school authorities had removed swastika graffiti discovered at the high school skate park without properly reporting the hate incident to police.
The Bridge’s reporting soon expanded to include a detailed federal complaint alleging rampant, unchecked antisemitic abuse at Concord-Carlisle High School that prompted at least one targeted student to transfer out of the district.
NENPA judges wrote that The Bridge “persisted in following this sensitive issue at every turn to bring it into sharp focus for local readers, led by [the] reporting of Dakota Antelman.”
As town officials and the wider community responded, The Bridge continued to document the public conversation — and the intense debate over whether Concord should adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism.
The judges called the coverage “evenhanded, in-depth, and a public service.” They praised the newspaper for shining a light on what they termed an “appalling” lack of transparency on the part of school authorities.
“This is exemplary journalism,” said Alice Kaufman, Concord Bridge board president.
“With community support, we have built a newspaper that is recognized among our peers throughout New England for careful, thorough research; clear writing; and acute sensitivity to the emotional impact that controversial stories like this can have,” she said. “We could not be more proud of the entire staff.”
The Publick Occurrences Award, named in honor of the first newspaper published in America in 1690, “celebrates journalism that exposes injustice, drives reform, and uplifts the role of a free press in civic life.”
‘Heartened and humbled’
Bridge staff accepted the award at NENPA’s October 9 Leadership Summit in Sturbridge.
“These stories were extraordinarily difficult to report — and doubtless very difficult to read for the many people who care deeply about this community,” Editor-in-Chief Celeste Katz Marston said.
“We are heartened and humbled by this recognition that The Bridge is excelling at doing what it was created to do four short years ago: to serve Concordians with fair, accurate, and thoughtful reporting.”
This is The Bridge’s second Publick Occurrences Award.
Last year, the newspaper took home NENPA honors for its yearlong “Milestone 250” series documenting how Concord prepared for and celebrated the semiquincentennial of the start of the Revolutionary War.
Including the latest honor, The Bridge’s work to date has garnered 16 regional and national awards.
