Reporting Live from the Nation's Capital
BU's Washington, D.C., Journalism Program puts students through the Beltway ringer and into some of the most coveted jobs in the business
By Vicky Waltz
Photos by Marie Cornuelle
Click on the slide show above to learn more about the Washington, D.C., Journalism Program. For more interactive features, click here.
Click here to find out more about the students featured in this article.
Rebekah Metzler’s footsteps echo through the spacious corridors of the Russell Senate Office Building as she dodges aides and press secretaries scurrying over the polished marble floors. It’s a typical September morning on Capitol Hill, and Metzler (COM’08), a third-semester graduate student in the Boston University Washington, D.C., Journalism Program, is right on time for a Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship hearing.
Joining other journalists and television news crews, she takes a moment to review the press packet. She’s familiar with the issue — improving Internet access for small businesses competing in a global economy — largely because it affects many businesses in her home state of Maine. In fact, after the hearing, Metzler has a private interview with the ranking committee member, Senator Olympia Snowe, a Maine Republican.
“It’s pretty exciting,” Metzler says. “Interviewing senators is not something that journalism students typically get to do.”
There are several things that are not typical about the activities of students in the semester-long program: students carry the same credentials as reporters from the New York Times or ABC News; they cover the news of virtually all government branches and agencies, from Congressional hearings to press conferences, as well as political campaigns. They learn to juggle stories, meet tight deadlines, and at a time when journalists are under fire for being biased or losing their skepticism, BU students are taught to ask the tough questions.
Founded in 2000 by Linda Killian (CAS’80, COM’80), a former editor at National Public Radio’s All Things Considered, the Washington, D.C., Journalism Program arranges for graduate and undergraduate students to work in the Washington bureaus of national news organizations, such as ABC, NBC, National Public Radio, the Boston Globe, and USA Today. In addition to working in those internships, students take a political reporting class and serve as Washington correspondents for New England news outlets, among them the Worcester Telegram and Gazette and the Cape Cod Times, the latter as part of the Boston University Washington News Service, the program’s intermediary with private news organizations.
“The program definitely gives students a leg up in the industry,” says Killian, now the program director. “They don’t have to start out at weeklies, because by the time they graduate, they’ll have spent an entire semester covering Congress and Washington politics for newspapers, radio, and television.” Consequently, she says, alumni land coveted jobs at news organizations throughout the country, including the Wall Street Journal, the Christian Science Monitor, and CNN.
The Pain
As the Washington correspondent for the Bangor Daily News, Maine’s second-largest newspaper, Metzler spends most mornings chasing down sources on Capitol Hill. She typically writes one story a day, but on this day she’s writing two: one on the hearing and one on the mathematics and reading assessment test scores of Maine’s fourth- and eighth-grade students. “It’s going to be pretty crazy,” she says, rushing to catch the Metro after her interview with Snowe. “I have four hours to file about thirty inches of copy.”
By the time Metzler reaches the BU Washington Journalism Center newsroom on Connecticut Avenue, it’s past noon. She takes a seat amid the blaring television sets and jangling telephones in a space shared by all of the students: fourteen from the College of Communication’s graduate journalism program and two undergraduate exchange students. “It’s actually great practice for working in a real newsroom,” Metzler says.
Managed by Mason McAllister, a former editor at the Washington Post, the BU newsroom is the hub of the Washington program. Students have their own desks, computers, and telephones, and five full- and part-time editors answer questions and provide assistance.
“Every story that’s written in the BU newsroom goes through two rounds of editing before it’s sent to the New England papers,” McAllister explains. “If it’s a television or radio story, the script is edited before it’s put on tape or aired. It’s important that our editors work closely with the students so they can ask questions about any changes we make.” The stories generated by the program typically get good play; many run on the front page of the local news sections, and some appear on A-1.
Michael Dowd, managing editor of the Bangor Daily News, says wire services like AP do a fine job providing the paper with copy from the nation’s capital. “But they don’t tie Maine angles into the stories,” he says. “Our BU correspondents report how these stories affect our local readers.”
Getting those stories may mean coming face-to-face with political power brokers, an experience that many students, as well as some professional reporters, can find intimidating. And when that happens, the students do what they have to do. “The most valuable thing I’ve taken from the program is the ability to handle myself in front of people who are generally considered to be very powerful,” says Phil Mattingly (COM’08), a correspondent for the Cape Cod Times, who has interviewed both Massachusetts senators, Democrats Edward M. Kennedy and John Kerry. “I was pretty nervous the first time I spoke to my senators, and I had to keep reminding myself that they need me as much as I need them.”
Also daunting, if less unnerving, is the amount of work the program requires. “Essentially, they’re working full-time jobs,” McAllister says of his students. “Their days begin early and end late, and deadlines are a way of life.”
No one understands this better than Jordy Yager (COM’08). Every Monday, Thursday, and Friday Yager pounds out copy for the Los Angeles Times, and on Tuesdays and Wednesdays he writes stories for the Manchester, New Hampshire, Union Leader. “Working for two papers can be really stressful,” he says. “Really stressful.”
Although they work at one of the largest newspapers in the country, interns for the Los Angeles Times typically come away with at least ten bylines during their time with the program. “They are the equivalent of staff reporters, and they’re judged by the same standards,” says Leslie Hoffecker, night news editor of the Los Angeles Times. “This is no fetch-coffee-for-the-columnists internship by any means.”
In fact, by his second week of work, Yager was covering stories on Capitol Hill. One of his most difficult — and most rewarding — assignments was a story about an agreement by Chiquita Brands International to pay a $25 million fine for allegedly making protection payments to a Colombian paramilitary group designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. government. “It was a hard story to write simply because there was so much background information that I had to learn,” Yager says.
There are other frustrations. Dan Ankeles (COM’08), a reporter for Cape and Islands Public Radio, recalls one particularly bad day. “My source flaked out on me,” he says, “and suddenly I didn’t have a story anymore. I learned a valuable lesson, though: always have three or four stories in the pipeline, in case one falls through.” The good news, says Ankeles, is that his source did respond the next day, and his story aired on the station at 7 a.m. and noon the day after that.
“This program is the reason I chose BU’s journalism school over Columbia’s,” says Ankeles, who also interned at the public radio business program Marketplace. “Between my internship and my newsroom assignment, I’m
covering things that most professional journalists have to wait for years to cover.”
Lou Ureneck, chair of COM’s department of journalism, which along with BU’s Division of International Programs oversees the program, agrees with Ankeles’s assessment. “Covering Washington for a regional newspaper or television station is excellent preparation for a career in journalism,” he says.
The gain
Currently, more than twenty program alums work at news outlets in the capital, including the Chronicle of Higher Education, the Federal Times, and the Washington bureau of the Associated Press; they and many others return to the Washington, D.C., Journalism Program as guest speakers and mentors.
“The program gave me the opportunity to have a home base in this city,” says Nitya Venkataraman (COM’05), a digital news producer at the ABC News Washington bureau. “Paying it forward is very important to me, and I’m happy to help other journalism students find work.”
In fact, Venkataraman was instrumental in Nightline’s decision to hire Eric Johnson (COM’07) as a production coordinator. “I met Nitya during a luncheon at the Washington program,” says Johnson. “I always joke that she sensed my desperation for a job, so she recommended me to the folks at Nightline.”
The willingness of alums to help students is another big selling point for the Washington program, Killian says. “Reporting from Capitol Hill is, of course, a wonderful opportunity that not many students get to have,” she says. “But even so, sometimes finding a job after graduation can be difficult, and an extensive alumni network further increases our students’ opportunities.”
Of course, nowadays being a journalist is a bit more complicated than it used to be. Newspaper circulation and television news viewership are declining. The media are getting their share of bad press because of a perceived preference for puff over substance and for their eagerness to jump on the bandwagon that led to the war in Iraq.
The proper role of the press, according to Killian, is the big lesson at the heart of the Washington, D.C., Journalism Program. “These days,” she says, “the media tend to favor Britney Spears’s underwear and Paris Hilton’s drunk driving record over serious stories. Here at BU, we teach our students to develop an appetite and an appreciation of real news.”
Real news, she says, doesn’t necessarily mean political news, but it does mean critical news, and it means pushing the reporting process beyond the statements issued by press secretaries. “Good reporters are skeptical,” Killian says. “We work very hard to teach our students to challenge their sources, be that source a city councilor or the president of the United States. Luckily, students are at an age where questioning authority comes pretty naturally.”
Click on the slide show above to hear students talk about their internships.
Click above to hear from alums of the program.
