BU students cover national conventions

Among the 15,000 journalists covering the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C., are seven Boston University students as part of the Washington, D.C., study abroad program. Six other students are returning after covering the Republican National Convention last week.

“This is a chance for the students to operate beyond college, in the real world,” said Lester Kretman, an editor to the students during the convention and former NBC News White House producer.

Joel Senick, a graduate student in the D.C. journalism program, found out just a few days before the convention began that he was going to the DNC.

“I didn’t expect to be able to go to something like this when I applied for the program,” he said. “It’s a great opportunity.”

Since Senick and a dozen other students learned they would be covering the national conventions, they have been researching and learning as much as they could from their professors and speakers about political journalism.

“Being a journalist, I want to have more opportunities for practical experience, and this is going to be one of those opportunities,” Senick said. “We will be put in a lot of situations that we haven’t been put in before, and that’s the way you learn and grow in this profession.”

Denise Baer, director of the BU Washington, D.C., program, said this gives students experience in political journalism. She said the students will be covering stories inside and outside the convention, as well as the state delegations particular to their media outlets.

The students will be working on assignments for newspapers in Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont as well as working with Lilly Broadcasting to produce content used on ABC, NBC and CBS affiliates, Baer said.

One of the most difficult aspects of the job will be to focus on local angles of the convention to make the stories relevant to his readers in New England, Senick said.

Baer, along with faculty advisors at the conventions Louis Peck and Lester Kretman, have been to a combined total of 30 conventions, Baer said. They have been preparing the students for the convention and will focus on teaching the students to cover not just the big stories, but also everything going on behind the scenes.

“This gives them a big head up over others because they’ve already worked in a very competitive environment where they are not being treated as college students, but as journalists,” said Kretman.

The students will gain an insight into how the political process works and how to interact with journalists from all over the world, he said.

One of the purposes of bringing students to a convention is to give them a sense of how to cover something of this size and scope, Peck, founder of National Journal’s Congress Daily, said. Peck accompanied the students to Tampa, Fla., for the RNC last week as their editor.

“They have to be prepared for a lot of surprises,” he said. “Conventions are not just what you see on the podium.”

Morgan True, a graduate student who went to the RNC, said the experience was surreal.

“I’ve never been to a political event like that of that size and magnitude,” he said. “Its nerve-racking. You’re there with a lot of people you’d like to work for. As a student you have to have confidence in what you’re doing there.”

Mounira Al Hmoud, another graduate student who attended the RNC, said she experienced many difficulties being thrown into a new city and jumping into a huge convention.

“It was really stressful sometimes, and we didn’t sleep much,” she said. “It wasn’t easy, but it was worth it.”

Baer said she plans to expand the D.C. program to continue offering advanced reporting opportunities and include students studying other things such as public relations.

“The trip as a whole speaks to BU’s journalism program,” Senick said. “They are able to get us experience we need to go out into the real world and get a job. These programs aren’t at every journalism school.”