Nick Hirshon

Nicholas Hirshon is an associate professor of communication at William Paterson University. He holds a Bachelor’s in journalism from St. John’s University (2006), a Master’s in journalism from Columbia University (2008), and a Ph.D. in mass communication from Ohio University (2016).

A former reporter for the New York Daily News, Hirshon is the author of We Want Fish Sticks: The Bizarre and Infamous Rebranding of the New York Islanders, released in 2018 via the University of Nebraska Press. He also wrote two books in Arcadia Publishing's Images of America series: one on Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum (2010), the Long Island arena known for hosting the Islanders, and another on Forest Hills (2013), the New York City neighborhood that was home to the U.S. Open tennis tournament for six decades. He has discussed his books with news outlets including CBS, News 12, the New York Post, and Newsday.

Hirshon has published in peer-reviewed journals such as American Journalism, Case Studies in Sport Management, International Journal of the History of Sport, International Journal of Sport Communication, Journal of Sports Media, and Journalism History. His research has also been recognized with awards and honors at several academic conferences. In 2015, his research on the groundbreaking association between New York City Mayor John Lindsay and the 1969 New York Mets was named the outstanding student paper by the American Journalism Historians Association.

Hirshon has received multiple awards recognizing excellence in teaching. During his time at William Paterson, his students successfully nominated him for two of the university's highest honors—the Students First Award in 2023 and the Faculty as Mentor Award in 2025. He previously received SPJ's New Jersey Journalism Educator of the Year Award in 2019. He is the first two-time recipient of SPJ's Outstanding Campus Adviser Award, an honor typically awarded to advisers at much larger universities. He has served as vice president of SPJ’s New Jersey chapter and president of its New York City chapter.

Before joining the faculty at William Paterson, Hirshon taught journalism at Ohio University (2013-2016), St. John’s University (2010-2013), and LaGuardia Community College (2009-2013). He received several major awards for his teaching during this time, including an AEJMC Promising Professors Award in 2014 and Ohio University's Graduate Associate Outstanding Teaching Award in 2015.

Hirshon was previously a reporter from 2005 to 2011 for the New York Daily News, where he amassed more than 1,000 bylines covering a mixture of breaking and community news. He also wrote three series that sparked efforts to save historic sites such as the former home of baseball player Jackie Robinson and the longest continuously operated movie theater in the United States. In 2010, Hirshon received an award from a prominent historic preservation group, the Historic Districts Council, for his coverage of forgotten sites in the borough of Queens. He also freelanced for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Hockey News.