After 28 years of teaching in Occidental’s College Writing Program, professor Bob Sipchen has retired and turned over his classes to two new hires, professors Jim Rainey and Nadra Nittle.
Since 1988, Sipchen has served as a senior editor at the Los Angeles Times (LA Times), where he has shared in Pulitzer Prizes for his journalism, editorial writing surrounding mental illness and homelessness in 2002 and breaking news coverage of a terrorist attack in San Bernardino in 2015. Sipchen has also served as editor-in-chief of the Sierra Magazine and communications director of its founding organization, the Sierra Club, one of the oldest and largest grassroots environmental organizations in the U.S.
According to Sipchen, he first became involved with Occidental through Richard Kipling, a colleague of his at the LA Times. Sipchen said he had just returned to Los Angeles after traveling nationwide to cover 1996 presidential campaigns when Kipling, who was teaching at Occidental at the time, brought him in to assist in his journalism class.
“A couple years later [Kipling] moved on and eventually wound up teaching at CalTech, and so I took over the class by myself,” Sipchen said. “That’s how I got [to Occidental], and I stayed there 28 years.”
Sipchen said he lived in San Francisco for eight of the years he taught at Occidental, and he would fly to LA weekly to continue being able to teach.
“I would fly down on a Monday night, teach my Tuesday class — or Wednesday class in the spring — and then fly back up,” Sipchen said.
Sipchen said he credits Kipling as an academic mentor.
“He was a really good role model for me, and I learned a lot from him,” Sipchen said. “Once I started teaching, I realized you’ve got to take this seriously — you can’t walk into the classroom and have a couple of talking points or a couple of exercises.”
According to Sipchen, teaching is a process of learning as you go, with his skills improving over time as he better understood how to keep students interested.
“The first time I had a class of 25 students staring blankly at me instead of jumping in to fill the blanks, I knew I’d better get to work,” Sipchen said. “If you talk to any of my former students, you’ll hear that I took a very interactive multimedia approach to teaching that tried to weave whatever the lesson plan was with a lot of visuals and some good humor.”
Professor Jim Rainey is carrying on the introductory Principles of Journalism course first taught by Sipchen. Rainey has worked professionally as a journalist for over 40 years and is currently a staff writer at the LA Times, where he has also served as urban affairs editor and state editor. Rainey has reported for NBC News and Variety and he serves on the board of the Daily Californian, the student newspaper of his alma mater, UC Berkeley.
Alongside Sipchen, Rainey was a part of the Pulitzer Prize-winning team at the LA Times that reported on police brutality riots in 1992. At the LA Times, Rainey has also shared in Pulitzer Prizes for coverage of a Northridge earthquake in 1994 and a North Hollywood bank robbery shootout in 1997. His political coverage includes seven presidential campaigns, five LA mayoral campaigns and the formation of a new government in Iraq in 2006. Rainey has also extensively reported on environmental issues, including a personal retrospective of his experience losing his childhood home in the Palisades fire in 2025.
“The positive way of saying it is I’m an elder,” Rainey said. “I’ve gained a lot of experience, and I feel like [working at Occidental is] a good opportunity to pass on some of what I’ve learned.”
Rainey said his introductory journalism class focuses on both sharpening student writing skills and gaining a foundational understanding of journalistic practices.
“It’s everything from some recent history of journalism in America to a little bit of law — the Constitution, First Amendment, public records,” Rainey said. “How to go out and gather information, how to be a reporter.”
According to Rainey, he was referred to and recommended for the position by Sipchen. Rainey said he enjoys the chance to hear from students about how they are experiencing journalism in a modern world.
“It’s an opportunity to learn from young people who are getting information in all sorts of new and different ways,” Rainey said. “I find it very energizing.”
Rainey said he has a strong connection to Occidental, as his wife and many of his friends attended the college and he has previously served as a guest speaker.
“I’m a big Occidental fan,” Rainey said. “I’m only three or four weeks into my experience at Occidental, but already I just really think the students are great — super smart, engaged, interested in the world.”
Professor Nadra Nittle is an Occidental graduate and award-winning journalist who writes for publications including Vox, The Guardian and The 19th News on topics including immigration, abolition and segregation. Nittle has published books connecting Bell Hooks and Toni Morrison to spirituality and is the founder of The Fault Line News, an independent publication covering the impact of history, politics, and culture on present-day California.
Nittle is a former student of Sipchen’s and said the two have kept in touch over the past two decades. According to Nittle, Sipchen’s classes helped her develop her skills as a feature writer and begin her career.
“I wrote a profile of a former classmate, learning about him in a way I hadn’t previously because I visited his home, met his grandmother and learned about his educational journey,” Nittle said via email. “Shortly afterward, I landed my first professional newspaper job, working as a news assistant and staff writer for The LA Times’ (now defunct) Inland Valley Times section in Ontario, California.”
Nittle, who completed a master’s degree in teaching English and Comparative Literary Studies at Occidental, said she previously taught at K-12 schools. While continuing to work as a journalist, she now teaches Sipchen’s “Rhetorical Fault Lines: Journalism, Propaganda and Persuasion” class.
“We’ve been focused on the propaganda aspect of it so far and how it intersects with journalism,” Nittle said. “Now we’re moving into: What are ways the media either challenges propaganda or allows it to perpetuate?”
Sipchen said he originally created the class when he returned to work at the LA Times after his experiences in San Francisco working for the Sierra Club.
“I thought then, and I think now, it’s really important to understand the rise of public relations in relation to journalism,” Sipchen said. “How journalism has changed over time is remarkable.”
According to Nittle, the focus of her class remains the same as when Sipchen was the professor, but she is working to further expand the breadth of topics.
“One of the things people have to do in the class is to act as if they’re creating their own nonprofit based on a social cause that’s important to them,” Nittle said. “I’ve broadened that topic to letting the students choose any social cause they want.”
Sipchen said journalism has changed remarkably throughout his career, including in newspaper circulation as media becomes increasingly digital and moves away from traditional print newspapers.
“The decline of journalism — and in particular local journalism — is a serious threat to democracy,” Sipchen said. “The future is in the hands of young journalists. New [generations] have to figure out what the course for journalism is.”
Contact Diana Trutia at trutia@oxy.edu
