College journalists face stigma as they prepare to cover political conventions

By Bob Chiarito

In late June in Chicago, after a routine hearing in a federal lawsuit against the city brought by a coalition of protest groups that want closer access to the Democratic National Convention, the plaintiffs and their attorneys gathered in the lobby of the Dirksen Federal Courthouse for a short press conference. 

This happens regularly at the Dirksen, whether it’s related to a trial of a fallen music superstar like R.Kelly, a corrupt Chicago alderman like Ed Burke or any number of crime syndicate members that have passed through the federal court in Chicago, properly known as the Northern District of Illinois.

After the short hearing, members of the press took the elevators down from the 21st floor where the hearing occurred to wait in the lobby for a presser, where a roped off bullpen was set up. TV cameramen were already set up, and once the reporters arrived, it would only be a few minutes until the attorneys and their client arrived to give their take of what happened upstairs. 

On this day, a group of graduate student journalists from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing were inside the courtroom. While they went through security in the lobby like every other citizen and were allowed into the courtroom, once they entered the bullpen in the courthouse lobby, members of the U.S. Marshals Service, responsible for security at the court, demanded to see their City of Chicago press credentials, which are only issued to full-time staff members of professional news organizations. 

Since the students only had their Medill press credentials, they were forced to exit the bullpen and stand to the side and were not allowed to record the press conference — something any member of the public who passed through security would have been allowed to do.

The Medill students were led by Kari Lyderson, an assistant professor at Medill who found the incident so confusing that she said it caused her to wonder if the U.S. Marshals denied her students access because perhaps they mistook them for protesters.

“They were just trying to get accurate information,” Lyderson said of their desire to attend and record the press conference.

Never mind that Medill is considered one of the premier journalism schools in the United States. Never mind that earlier this year, undergraduate student journalists working for The Daily Northwestern broke the story about the hazing in the Northwestern’s men’s football program that would be picked up by national outlets  — or that they, like other college journalists at campuses around the country, would routinely beat national outlets on coverage of college encampments that occurred on university campuses this spring from coast to coast.

The Medill students did not have the proper credentials, according to the U.S. Marshals in charge that day. The U.S. Marshals Service did not respond to a request for comment for this story. However, Joseph Fitzpatrick, an assistant U.S. attorney in the Northern District of Illinois and spokesperson for the courthouse, said that he was not aware of any recording restrictions in the lobby except for the prohibition on recording the security screening process.

As journalists from all over the world descend on Milwaukee for the Republican National Convention this week and then Chicago in August for the Democratic National Convention, security will be intense and credentials will be tough to get. For the DNC, more than 3,000 media requests have come in already, according to Chicago Police Officer Alexis Interrante, who works in the department’s Office of News Affairs and processes the requests.

While student journalists are eligible for convention press credentials (unlike the City of Chicago credentials), the incident the Medill students faced at the Dirksen is one example of the hurdles student journalists may face while attempting to cover both political conventions. 

“It’s a lose-lose situation,” Lyderson said. “They get the hostility towards journalists and the increasing law enforcement and government walls that are put up toward journalists but they don’t get the privileges that so-called official journalists get so they lose out on both fronts.”

Yet, while the hurdles may be tougher because of the increased security around both events, they are nothing new to student journalists at schools around the country. For many student journalists, the highest hurdle is a perception issue, which may seem subjective and invisible but can be as tough to overcome as the security barricades currently being erected outside the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee in preparation for next week’s RNC. And the experts who spoke to GJR for this story said if students from Medill are facing hardships, it’s a safe bet that journalism students around the country are as well.

“There’s almost a dismissal of professionalization because the word student comes before the word journalist. I don’t like to call them student journalists. I call them pre-service like in education where they call student teachers pre-service teachers,” said Patrick Johnson, an assistant professor of journalism and former director of student media at Marquette University in Milwaukee.

Johnson said it’s vital for student journalists to get past gatekeepers in order to cover events and learn.

“To me, one of the most significant learning opportunities our journalists can have is to cover something live.”

Karishma Bhuiyan, one of the Medill students who was turned away at the Dirksen Federal Building, agreed that the student journalist label can be an obstacle that can limit them and ends up hurting their readers.

“I feel like whenever me and my peers say that we’re student journalists that we are taken less seriously than someone who is fully employed. Generally young people don’t gravitate toward the news. So when we aren’t taken seriously it makes it harder to get news to other young people.

Isabelle Senechal, another Medill student journalist who was turned away at the Dirksen Federal Building, said the student label has handicapped her at times but she has found an approach that tends to work for her.

“I generally try to introduce myself as a journalist and not a student journalist because I found when I introduced myself as a student journalist, people tend to not want to talk to me,” Senechal said. “I think they consider it a waste of time even though our work gets published and is news.”

Laura Widmer, executive director of the National Scholastic Press Association, Associated Collegiate Press and Quill and Scroll, said the perception that student journalists are not real journalists is a “short-sighted” view and that those believe that they need to realize the importance of student journalists.

“A lot of college papers are filling a news desert for not only their college community but the community that their college is in,” Widmer said.

Bhuiyan said that one of the reasons the student journalists often scooped national outlets during coverage of the college encampments was because several universities only allowed their students and faculty on school grounds. However, that experience ended up earning the student journalists respect from several national outlets — something she thinks should not just be a one-off incident.

National outlets “realized they need to work alongside the student journalists to get access. There’s so much activity going on at college campuses, student journalists should get respect because they are doing a lot of work. If we treat each other as equals there’s so much we can learn from each other.”

Bhuiyan said along with the perception problems associated with being a student journalist, she faces another hurdle because she wears a hijab.

“I wear a hijab. I do feel like sometimes I’m treated differently than my white peers,” she said, adding that when she went through security at the Dirksen Federal Building she had to show three forms of identification while her classmates only had to show one.

Bhuiyan’s classmate Malavika Ramakrishnan agreed, saying that even though she does not wear a hijab, she faces discrimination at times because she is from India. However, she said her main issue has been because she’s a student journalist.

“Sometimes it’s harder for people of color and women of color especially but mostly, some people don’t take student journalists seriously,” Ramakrishnan said.

Ramakrishnan added one way she scores points is simply by being nice to gatekeepers and potential sources, like protesters who are wary of any media.

“I try to be a nice person to them and that really helps,” she said.

Senechel also said that on the flip side, student journalists have an advantage over traditional media when it comes to covering campus news.

“Generally younger sources tend to open up to us more because they can recognize that we’re the same age or in the same stage of life. I think it’s easier to report on a community that you’re part of rather than parachuting in as an outsider.”

For the RNC and DNC, the Medill students were credentialed through partnerships with the Chicago Reader for DNC coverage and the Wisconsin State Journal for the RNC.

“We’re not going to write about a speech that a politician makes because there will be so many media outlets and journalists there,” Senechal said, adding that “no one will read” her story if she wrote about President Joe Biden or former President Donald Trump’s speech. Instead, she and her classmates are focused on finding niche stories.

“We’re really trying to focus on stories that are about the context of the area. The history, looking for unique angles so that our pieces stand out to our readers and the readers of the organizations that we’re partnering with.”

Widmer said that’s a good strategy, and added that student journalists have one vital trait that some professional journalists may have lost — hunger.

“They are trying to get great stories for their portfolio. They don’t say, ‘oh gosh, I can’t. I have to study for a test tomorrow.’ They’re out there getting the story.”

Bob Chiarito is a Chicago-based freelance reporter who will be covering the RNC and DNC for The New York Times.