Semester in D.C. Puts OU Students on the Front Line of Journalism

Zaria Oates at a National Press Club event in Washington, D.C.

Semester in D.C. Puts OU Students on the Front Lines of Journalism

For any learner, experiences outside the classroom connect theory and concepts to the real world – helping students learn about themselves and the world around them.

In OU’s Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communication, one way this is achieved is through a unique program where students spend a semester in Washington, D.C. covering news alongside some of the nation’s leading journalists.

Since 2018, students in the Gaylord News program have reported on some of the most impactful events and topics affecting Oklahomans and the nation – providing news coverage for OU and Oklahoma media outlets – while learning valuable personal lessons.

The students’ work has been carried at news outlets like the Norman Transcript, the Enid News & Eagle, the Stillwater News Press, as well as the online news site NonDoc.com.

“Every day I was faced with new challenges and experiences in Washington,” said Pepper Purpura, a current broadcast journalism major who completed her D.C. rotation as a junior in spring 2022.

Pepper Purpura

Purpura produced TV news spots during her time in D.C. and covered the landmark Supreme Court case McGirt v. Oklahoma.

Having such a high-profile platform allowed Purpura to understand the field of journalism in a new way.

“One of the most rewarding parts of the D.C. experience was realizing the power and importance of my role in journalism,” Purpura said. “When you are a student, it sometimes feels like you’re pretending to be a journalist while covering stories. Gaylord News provided me an opportunity to publish work that actually created an impact.”

Purpura said the unwritten rules of how to cover news at the Capitol were hard to navigate at first, but the experience taught her how to adapt at a moment’s notice.

Mike Boettcher, Gaylord College visiting professor and associate director of the OU Center for Intelligence and National Security, and John Schmeltzer, Gaylord Engleman/Livermore Professor in Community Journalism, created the immersive reporting program in 2018.

Boettcher and Schmeltzer, both of whom have decades of experience in national and international reporting, recognized that the journalism model had changed as many media outlets stopped covering Washington. The last full-time reporter from an Oklahoma media outlet had retired when the program was being considered.

This left almost no one to report back to Oklahomans on the activities of the state’s Washington, D.C. delegation.

The program launched in 2018, sending six OU students to D.C. Each academic year since, three to 20 OU journalism students have been reporting from the Capitol on a rotation. Depending on the student’s degree plan, the experience can be used for internship credit hours.

Zaria Oates, who was a senior during her fall 2021 rotation, graduated in the spring from Gaylord College with a concentration in broadcast journalism.

She, too, said that not only did the experience teach her about her chosen field, but also about herself.

“D.C. was so memorable because it taught me how resilient I am,” Oates said. “The most important lesson I learned in D.C. was that sometimes you have to put your head down and do your work. You’re not always going to be best friends with who you work with, but as long as you can work with anyone, you’ll succeed.”

Oates said a typical Monday in the Capitol for a student would begin with pitching stories to a professional reporter – either a working journalist in D.C. or a Gaylord adviser.

Students would then take more meetings with professional journalists from national outlets like The Associated Press, CNN and NBC to ask questions about the field, the day-to-day life a paid reporter and get advice on career path development. Students cover and produce their stories during the remainder of the week.

Now having graduated from OU, Oates will be starting a news reporter position in Memphis at ABC 24 TV station.

The ability to adapt was a skill that fellow Gaylord College student Nancy Marie Spears also developed when she completed her rotation in the fall of 2021 as a senior.

Nancy Marie Spears

"I can’t tell you how many times I would be working on multiple stories per week that I had pitched, and then would have to do two or three little breaking news blurbs along the way because that’s just how fast and often news breaks at Capitol Hill,” Spears said, who graduated in the spring with a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism with a print concentration. “You have to be ready to pivot at all times, and that can be challenging at first, but I loved it because it had such high production expectations that I meshed well with.”

Spears, an enrolled citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, is now contracted for The Imprint, she said, a nonprofit publication focusing on child welfare and youth justice issues, as its Indian Child Welfare Reporter. She plans to pursue an advanced degree in federal Indian law.

Wherever their professional careers take them, the students said their time in Washington D.C. and Gaylord College at OU have prepared them to meet the demands of the modern media landscape.

“Each time I began to feel comfortable, there was always a new situation to navigate,” Purpura said. “Though that can be scary at times, it emboldened me to become more comfortable outside of my comfort zone and take risks. If things don’t go as planned, I could always recover and move forward.”

To read the students’ Washington D.C. coverage, along with other student-produced news, click here.

By Jaimy Jones

Article Published: Wednesday, June 15, 2022

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