Sitting in the back of a pickup truck that bounced up the side of a mountain toward a Spanish pig farm, Darin Zullo found it hard to believe that only a few weeks ago he had never been outside the U.S. Within the span of a month in summer 2025, Zullo had transformed into a pavement-pounding reporter who was now comfortable enough traveling alone in a rural part of Seville. He also wasn’t the only one. Zullo was part of a team of Northeastern University student journalists who essentially functioned as a traveling press corps during a month-long study abroad program known as a Dialogue of Civilizations. “I think the more reporting experience you get, the more you get an intuition for how to find the pulse of an environment,” Zullo said. “That’s true anywhere, and that was true in Spain as well.”
Led by investigative reporter and Northeastern professor Mike Beaudet and Northeastern Spanish lecturer Yanet Monica Canavan, the students reported on everything from flamenco dancers in Madrid to Spain’s plummeting birth rate. More than just a class project, their work became the centerpiece of “Exploring Spain,” a four-segment entry in the award-winning magazine-style TV news program Chronicle, which airs on Boston’s WCVB-TV, where Beaudet also works as a reporter.
