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COM students covering Democratic Convention look forward to once-in-a-lifetime opportunity
By Brian Fitzgerald
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Mitchell Zuckoff Photo by Kalman Zabarsky |
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This summer, 80 student journalists in the College of Communication will be covering a flood in Boston — a deluge of 35,000 delegates, along with thousands more spectators and protesters flowing into the city for the Democratic National Convention.
The BU students, armed with much-coveted full press credentials, will join some 5,000 media professionals at the convention.
The massive gathering at the FleetCenter July 26 to 29 promises to be the largest political event ever held in the city — and the 80 COM students (four classes of 20) will be part of history. Their stories and photos not only will appear on a COM Web site, but also will reach a nationwide audience through such media outlets as the Washington, D.C.–based States News Service (SNS) newswire.
“It's a rare and fantastic reporting opportunity for students,” says Mitchell Zuckoff, a COM visiting journalism professor. “We knew we had to take advantage of this. A presidential convention won't come back to Boston in many, many years. These students will be able to apply their skills and end up with impressive clips that will help them get jobs when they graduate.”
The 500-level courses the students will take are News and Event Photography, Political Reporting, Photo Editing and Design, and Multimedia Publishing. The convention will also come to BU: three weekly assemblies are planned prior to the event where outside media experts, politicians, and pundits — as well as COM faculty — will share their experience with the students.
The application deadline for students is April 21. Zuckoff, who is teaching the Political Reporting course with fellow Boston Globe reporter Dick Lehr, also a COM visiting professor, says that competition for this unique opportunity is already intense. “We've been inundated with applications,” says Zuckoff. “We'll be selecting students who have shown that they can handle this kind of coverage — our 20 best prospects — the ones that are ready to make the most out of this experience.”
The program will operate as a news agency. “This is not a minor league operation,” he says. “We're going to treat them like professionals and hold them to a very high standard. They'll be expected to get in there, get the story, get back to the newsroom, and file their stories before deadline.”
The students writing for the SNS newswire will cover state delegations from across the country. “They'll be reporting for newspapers in states such as Montana, Indiana, Illinois, and New Mexico,” says Zuckoff. “These newspapers can obtain a lot of the general news from AP, but what they can't get is the customized, on-the-ground reporting that we're going to offer. The AP isn't going to cover, say, what the New Mexico delegation did during those four days, but we are. So the New Mexico newspapers are much more likely to run our stories as sidebars to their main stories.”
Zuckoff, a former SNS reporter for the Hammond (Indiana) Times, and the Peoria (Illinois) Star, points out that many SNS writers have gone on to distinguished journalism careers, including the Boston Globe's John Ellement and Jennifer Babson, Naftali Bendavid of the Miami Herald, and Jill Carroll, who writes for the Wall Street Journal.
Unconventional and chaotic
As scripted as presidential conventions tend to be, Zuckoff says, this event has the potential to be somewhat unconventional, and possibly chaotic. “I think this will be a great experience for our reporters,” he says. “They are probably going to see some platform fights. Sure, the Democrats are going to try to present the unity front — everybody united with the common goal of unseating the president. But within the party there is still a great range of opinion. What will be interesting is where the delegates are willing to compromise.”
And they are certainly going to see some protests outside the FleetCenter. “We don't know exactly who's going to show up to protest,” he says. “We do know that we're at ground zero of this gay marriage debate, and John Kerry has obviously tried to maintain the middle ground on this issue, supporting civil unions but not supporting gay marriage. People on all sides of that issue could be coming from all over the country, and they could very well clash outside of the convention. This could turn into a bit of a referendum on social issues. There is a lot at stake, and I'm excited that our students are going to be covering it.”
Lehr's and Zuckoff's course “will be one of the most important I'll take at BU,” says Michelle Hopey (COM'04), a graduate student of journalism. “There is no better experience than one that is hands-on, especially in a journalism school. I think we're really lucky to have the opportunity to attend the convention and report on it for actual publication. Not many entry-level reporters even get that chance. Another reason I feel this will be a great course is because of the professors — Mitchell Zuckoff and Dick Lehr. They are so passionate about what they do that it's inspiring to be around them. You can't help but feel motivated when you're in their classes.”
Brad Perriello (COM'04), another graduate student in the Political Reporting course, says that the convention is “a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that I'd be nuts to pass up. Any chance to work as a quasi-professional — with all the trappings except the paycheck — is worth its weight in gold.”
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April 2004
Boston University
Office of University Relations