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BU's newshounds track down stories in Washington Journalism Program

By Hope Green

All news is local news, people in the media business like to say, paraphrasing the words of the late Speaker of the House from Massachusetts. Just ask BU's journalism interns down in D.C.

This semester, the first nine participants in the College of Communication's new Washington Journalism Program are learning their trade by working as capital correspondents for professional news organizations. Each week they file copy for New England daily papers like the Keene Sentinel, in southern New Hampshire, as well as such media giants as CNN.

	Katherine Bonamici (COM'01) looks over a Federal Election Commission report at the new College of Communication news bureau in Washington. Bonamici is a correspondent for two New Hampshire newspapers and an intern with NPR. Photo by Heidi Masek (COM'01)

Putting a local spin on national stories is a big part of the job. Jaspreet Dhaliwal (COM'01), for instance, has an internship with the Long Island, N.Y., newspaper Newsday. A day after the October 12 terrorist attack on the USS Cole in Yemen, the paper gave her the kind of assignment many reporters dread: interviewing a victim's bereaved relatives.

Dhaliwal took a breath and picked up the phone.

"I ended up getting the stepmother and father of one of the deceased, who was still missing at that point," she says. "He went to a boarding school in New York, and this was the guy Newsday was going to lead the story with. The stepmother was on the verge of tears. It was a very hard interview."

Cara Baruzzi (COM'01) is corresponding for The Day in New London, Conn., as well as working as an intern at People magazine. One of her more challenging assignments for the Connecticut paper was about the Eastern Pequot Indians, a tribe in North Stonington, Conn., that is petitioning the federal government for official recognition so it can build a gambling casino.

"The first week we were here, we met all the press secretaries for the congressmen we're covering," Baruzzi says. "They treated us like real reporters. I definitely feel like we're going to work rather than school."

The Washington Journalism Program, a joint venture between the College of Communication and BU's International Programs Office, combines classroom theory with practice in the field. In the process, professors say, students step onto the fast track for careers in mass media.

To be selected for the program, graduate and undergraduate students need to have previous newsroom experience, either in another internship or at the Daily Free Press. They live and work in the Boston University Washington Center, a Georgian-style classroom and dormitory complex on Connecticut Avenue where BU has housed interns in politics, law, the arts, and other fields for a number of years.

Part of the building has been turned into a headquarters for the new BU--New England News Service, a real newsroom that's outfitted with a video and radio editing area and wall-mounted cable televisions. The journalism interns spend part of their week in this bureau working for the New England papers, and other days at national print and broadcast outlets, among them National Public Radio, Fortune magazine, the Wall Street Journal, and the Congressional Quarterly.

Program director Linda Killian, a longtime Washington reporter and former senior editor of NPR's All Things Considered, teaches the students a course in political reporting and lines up guest lectures by prominent journalists. A recent event featured David Maraniss, a Pulitzer prize--winning reporter for the Washington Post, whose biographies of Bill Clinton and Al Gore are part of the course syllabus.

Killian also guides the students in their bureau assignments, such as a year-end wrap-up of congressional activity.

"I designed this program to be essentially what I wish had been in existence when I was at BU," says Killian (COM'80, CAS'80). "Through the years of my career I've sort of crystallized what students need to learn if they would like to be national reporters."

Killian got her start at the Worcester Telegram. But she says today's economy and the increasing role of the Internet in news dissemination enable graduates to jump more quickly to national media organizations. "I'm trying to make that more possible for them," she says. "This program combines everything they need."

Students say they appreciate the valuable contact with professional journalists, not to mention the dozens of clips they can add to their portfolios. Each of the interns has contributed to a front-page story or two, which they celebrate as a group at their Connecticut Avenue office.

"It's great. Every day you walk in and one of the other people you work with says, ‘Oh, my God, I just got published in this national publication,' and everyone applauds," Dhaliwal says. "We all support each other -- it's not cutthroat. We all have a lot of responsibility, we all have to file stories, but everybody's here for everybody else."

For more information about the Washington Journalism Program, visit www.bu.edu/com/jo/washjocenter. To apply for the spring 2001 semester, contact William Ketter, COM professor and chairman of the journalism department, at wbketter@bu.edu.

10 November 2000
Boston University
Office of University Relations