Political Journalism on Tour

This spring, like most springs, 12 students ventured to Washington, DC with the study tour program hosted by the Rosenfield Program in Public Affairs, International Relations, and Human Rights and the Center for Careers, Life, and Service (CLS). Since 2015, these two offices have collaborated to create opportunities for students to explore interests related to a particular topic through face-to-face interactions.

Gracie Brandsgard ’14, director of the government, law, and policy career community in the CLS says, “There’s a lot of overlap between the Rosenfield Program and my career community with the CLS, particularly in our shared areas of interest, so it’s a natural collaboration between our two offices on campus. And it combines both the academic and career exploration of a topic which creates a holistic student experience.”

Planning the study tour starts in the fall where the Rosenfield committee helps choose a theme before doing outreach and hosting info sessions. Each year the theme is selected based on what is timely and interesting to the students. This year’s theme was “Politics and Media,” and the students who attended had clear interest in the intersection.

Ed Cohn, history professor and director of the Rosenfield Program says, “Our goal was to have a variety of students. We want to get students who are very interested in both journalism and politics, but we did not want it to be all S&B writers or political science majors. We welcomed students who had broad interest in the theme and are still exploring and thinking about what they want to do."

One first year student, Rachael Feldacker ’29, learned about the study tour because she was taking a history class with Professor Cohn. She said, “I've been interested in politics for a really long time. And I've always been interested in how politics engages with communications, particularly in newspapers and in the public settings.”  

A learning experience 

The students who participated in the study tour found it a great experience and a fun way to dive into a topic. They were able to tour several publications such as the Washington bureaus of the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, the Atlantic, and NPR.  They also met with individuals including Senator Chuck Grassley, Pat Caldwell ’09 (senior editor for political investigations at the Washington Post), and Hayes Gardner ’15 (a business reporter for the Baltimore Banner) who gave insight into the diversity of jobs connecting politics and journalism. 

Feldacker explained, “We toured a bunch of different publications. For example, Politico talked about their audience as being a very politically literate group, so they could use more jargon and do deep analysis. Whereas at the Atlantic, they talked about how they value a wide variety of ideas.”

Sarah Evans ’26, another student on the trip and editor in chief of the S&B, said “I think it's really important to consider the ways in which politics interacts with journalism, especially in the specific political moment. [...] We talked a lot about the imperative to get information out there, and free information vs. putting information behind paywalls since journalists need to be paid for their work. Which I thought was a very interesting debate that I wasn't necessarily expecting.”

The students learned lots from the publication tours and found the comparison between them particularly illuminating. One of the highlights was an all-day site visit at NPR (which included a tiny desk concert) that was led by Cory Turner ’98.

Getting to interact with alumni who worked in these spaces was another great learning opportunity for the students to learn about the theme. Because Grinnell doesn’t have a journalism or communications program, the alumni ended up in these positions by atypical paths. Evans said, “A lot of the alums we talked to didn't necessarily leave Grinnell being like, ‘I'm going to go into journalism,’ but a lot of them said that the experience that they got from Grinnell and a liberal arts education really helped them to do so.”

Similarly, Hana Hashimoto ’28, a member of the Rosenfield Committee, said, “Talking to alums, just hearing their experience in Grinnell and after Grinnell was very insightful, and it also made me feel a lot more secure about my future because most of the people that we met didn’t plan to become journalists.” 

Connecting with alumni 

The study tour program has a focus connecting students with Grinnell alumni to showcase the breadth of career paths available, including some that students might not be thinking about. “I think a piece of it too is that the trip serves as a celebration of the impact that Grinnellians are having on a particular topic or in a particular space,” Brandsgard said.

The program coordinators work to create alumni connections by visiting sites where alumni work and holding informal networking events with alumni in the area. This provides students opportunities to learn about the theme specifically and life after Grinnell more generally while making connections that can help them in their future work. Evans said, “I wanted to see if there were any relationships I could make for the Scarlet and Black specifically, because there were five or six of us from the S&B, and every week, we have a meeting where we talk to our professional advisor and sometimes invite guest speakers.”

Hashimoto and Feldacker both enjoyed meeting alumni from the DC area even if they were not involved with journalism or politics. Feldacker said, “The alumni dinner on the last night was just so fun. There were so many Grinnell alumni in DC doing so many different things, and it was nice to know not only had they found career success in DC, but they'd also maintained a Grinnell community.”

The students came away having learned more about politics and media and the different ways to engage in the space while also making connections that will be helpful to them as they continue in their Grinnell journey, even after graduation.