Beginning May 31, five new faces will join the ranks of Washington, D.C. reporters who fill the halls of the federal government. But instead of the experienced correspondents who’ve become associated with covering the nation’s capital, all these journalists will be students.
Arizona State University’s Cronkite News Service will open its bureau in D.C. at the end of the month, with seasoned editor and instructor Steve Crane serving as director. This will be the second bureau for the university-based wire service, which launched in Phoenix in 2007. The university’s journalism school first established an endowment in longtime CBS anchor Walter Cronkite’s name in the 1980s. Cronkite permitted the use of his name and also became an active participant in school activities. In 1984, the school renamed the journalism department to the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Telecommunication, honoring “the most trusted man in America.” Today, the Cronkite News Service is an extension of the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication.
Crane says the bureau, located near Dupont Circle, will run throughout the entire year, excluding semester vacations, with five students expected for this summer and possibly six or seven in the fall. Although that may not sound like many, Crane says the bureau will be more than capable of getting the job done. “I think, even at the smaller end, we’re still the largest Arizona-based news gathering operation in D.C.,” he said. “I would love to have lots and lots of people but you can cover Washington pretty well with a handful of folks.”
As for what will be covered, Crane says students may be assigned to a specific subject area, Arizona representative, government agency or some sort of mixture of those topics. “One of the goals will be for everybody to have a beat coming in and to start to learn how to work a beat,” he said. “And hopefully then they can generate news. We’re not going to cut them loose entirely; I’ll work with them. But by the end of the semester we hope that they’re comfortable enough that they’re working their beat, they’re finding the stories, they’re pitching the stories, they’re tracking them down.” Arizona news outlets will then be able to pick up the stories from the wire service.
Crane, who oversaw the University of Maryland’s Capital News Service D.C. bureau for eight years, understands the impact this kind of work can have on the students. “As a reporter in one of these bureaus, you’re checking your traps every day; you’re understanding how the business actually works,” he says. “It gives you a sense of D.C. It’s different than a lot of other coverage you can do but in many ways it’s not. It’s giving you a sense of what’s important and what’s not, what you have to cover and what you don’t.”
As Crane points out, the students won’t be the only ones benefitting from the bureau. “We’re going to be covering Arizona and the southwest and Congress and telling people what their elected representatives are doing, what their government is doing,” he says. “And, this is nobody’s fault, but right now there just aren’t as many people doing that as there used to be, and that’s unfortunate, so we’re filling a void in that respect.”
Arizona State University’s journalism school is only the fourth to open a bureau in the nation’s capital. “Between Maryland and [Northwestern University’s] Medill and [the University of] Missouri, that’s good company to be in,” Crane says. “It’s a great opportunity for the students. It’s a good service for the state and for the media in the state. And for the university, for the Cronkite School, it puts us on the map. And this is not just because of this; it’s because the school has really been charging forward in the last five or six years and this is just continuing that.”
As for why Crane has signed on to the bureau, the answer goes back to the reporter and teacher in him. “It’s the opportunity to run a newsroom, which is just great fun and interesting and it’s what journalists want to do,” he says. “But it’s also an opportunity to work with young reporters. And it’s cheesy and it’s awful and it’s smarmy, but there’s always that point in the semester where you have a reporter and you just can see them sort of click in on something, whether it’s a story or whether it’s how to approach a story or whether it’s how to write something or report something. That’s probably the most rewarding part of it.”
–Lauren Cohen
