It was the ultimate post-election trip for 10 students from the two journalism groups at Elon University. The students from the Elon chapters of the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) and the Radio & Television News Directors Association (RTNDA) toured major Washington, D.C., news outlets and other media sites the week before Thanksgiving. The media tour was sponsored by SPJ, RTNDA and the School of Communications.
The Nov. 20-23 trip was led by SPJ adviser Anthony Hatcher and RTNDA adviser Rich Landesberg. Students on the trip were Drake Springer, Leigh Lesniak, Randy Gyllenhaal, Lauren Limerick, Sarah Sager, Kevin Kline, Pam Richter, Camille DeMere, Nick Ochsner and Mitch Pittman.
In a whirlwind day on Friday, students started with an early breakfast with former CBS and CNN correspondent Joie Chen. Chen now works for an Internet company that has niche oriented TV channels. After eating, students got on the metro and sat in on the noon news show at ABC affiliate WJLA and got to sit down with news director Alex Likowski and talk about the reality of television news and the modern converged newsroom. Likowski told students that storytelling is as important as technical skill and good producers are always in high demand. Students also got to see The Politico and politico.com, a popular political newspaper and Web site associated with WJLA. Two of Landesberg’s former students from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, Courtney Robinson and Pamela Brown, are reporters at WJLA and helped set up the visit.
Next stop was the ABC News Bureau where students got to see both the radio and television operations. School of Communications Advisory Board member Doug Limerick is a long-time anchor at ABC radio, and he gave the students a tour of his broadcast studio. Limerick, who does live news broadcasts weekday mornings and can be heard locally on WZTK 101.1 FM in Burlington, has been with ABC since 1982. His radio career began in 1961 at WOHS Radio in his hometown of Shelby, N.C. Limerick attended Wake Forest University, and he is the father of Laura Limerick, ’09. On the TV side, students met with ABC News Senior White House Correspondent Jake Tapper, who covered Barack Obama’s campaign for the presidency and is the new ABC White House correspondent, Lisa Stark, who is ABC’s go-to person on disasters, and Homeland Security correspondent Pierre Thomas.
After ABC, students traveled down Pennsylvania Avenue into the shadow of the Capital for a visit to C-SPAN. Another Communications School Advisory Board member, C-SPAN Co-President Rob Kennedy, arranged for the tour of the public affairs network. Kennedy’s two sons attended Elon. Students learned what a valuable research tool the C-SPAN Web site is and how to access the endless hours of free video. On the way back to the metro students traveled past the Capital to look at the inauguration preparations.
That evening was capped by a dinner with alumni including Nikki Wasikowski, ’08, who works for Arbitron, Dan Hanson, ’05, who works for Booz Allen, Jason Barrett ’06, who works for Justice at Stake, Scott McCrary, ’00, who works for CBS Newspath, and Rebecca Schely, ’08, who works as a graphic designer for the Ronald Reagan Building. On Saturday night, students got to mingle with local reporters, CNN producers and others who work in media in Washington.
Saturday was a chance to visit the Newseum, a $450 million interactive museum of news and journalism on Pennsylvania Avenue. Four hours were spent in the massive Newseum and even that wasn’t enough to cover every exhibit. From the 1690 Publick Occurrences, the nation’s first newspaper, to remnants of the Berlin Wall and the World Trade Center Towers from Sept. 11, 2001, the Newseum is four floors of news – and world – history.
The Washington media tour is the first of a series of planned collaborations between SPJ and RTNDA. The purpose of the tours, according to Landesberg and Hatcher, is to network, educate and make contacts that will enrich journalism education at Elon.
By Anthony Hatcher and Rich Landesberg