Covering the 2024 Campaign

Newhouse School students covered two of the biggest events of the 2024 presidential campaign, reporting and writing stories from the nominating conventions for media outlets across the country. 

Nine students traveled to Milwaukee in July to cover the Republican National Convention, while 10 students visited Chicago the following month to cover the Democratic National Convention. 

Led by Joel Kaplan, associate dean of graduate programs at Newhouse and a former political and investigative reporter, the students gained invaluable experience working side-by-side with political journalists from around the country. They built up their résumés while providing or supplementing content for local media outlets by writing and reporting stories for broadcast, social media and news platforms. Students also created packages for airing and conducted interviews.

The Newhouse contingent was even featured in a CBS News Chicago story about the DNC. Among those interviewed was Luke Radel, a junior broadcast and digital journalism major who produced stories from both conventions for WKTV NewsChannel 2 in his hometown of Utica, New York. 

“[I was] pulling back from the national picture and finding local stories that matter to people in my community, my hometown and my friends and neighbors,” Radel told CBS News Chicago. “It’s been really cool to hear from them about what it means to have someone on a national stage talking about issues that matter to them.”