Professor: Kim Pearson
Class Meetings: Monday/Thursday
2:00pm-3:20pm
Students in this class will function as a team to cover the local angles of Election 2016. You will learn how to establish a political beat — including covering a local candidate for office as well as local organizing for presidential candidates, campaign finance and voter registration efforts. You will learn how to research and report on candidates positions, their supporters and their contributors. of politics and elections: voting rules and jurisdictions, campaign finance rules, how political primaries and debates work, and what lobbyists do. Guest speakers will in-clude veteran political reporters, consultants or advisors. In the past we’ve had the Trenton bu-reau chief for Bloomberg, a public relations advisor for national Republican candidates, and a communications director for the Democrats in the New Jersey State Assembly. You will pro-duce hard news, feature and news analysis pieces, including coverage of a campaign event, a candidate profile, a story on voting and a campaign finance story, a local issue story and live team coverage of the Pennsylvania primary (the New Jersey primary is scheduled after the se-mester ends.) This course ran in 2012 and 2008 – Professor Pearson can share past syllabi and examples of previous coverage with those who are interested.