Hofstra Magazine

Bob Papper

Professor and Chair, Department of Journalism, Media Studies and Public Relations

Read More About the Debate

The only way to learn about the chaos of a campaign is to experience it. And that’s what many, maybe most, of our journalism, media studies and public relations students got to do in and around the debate.

Students like Jenny Stein and David Gordon were fact-checking Senators John McCain and Barack Obama as they spoke, working with faculty member Peter Goodman. Kye Poronsky and Amanda Chamberlain were assigned to the media room in the Mack Student Center to assist journalists. Rebecca Carlson, Amy Robinson, Laura Newman, Christine Wilson, Colin Sullivan, Jean Telfort, Deena Kimball and so many others worked in the Media Filing Center, sending out press releases, answering phone calls and assisting media with interviews. The students worked alongside faculty members Ellen Frisina, Vicky Geyer and Suzanne Berman.

Katie Nolan drove Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT) around, and he offered her a job upon graduation. Jillian Lipari was part of the Obama motor pool, and she and Katie Nolan were invited to breakfast with Senator Obama as a Friday morning thank-you. Students and faculty launched “The Rhetoric of the Candidates Meets the Rhetoric of the Camera,” focusing on the performance of the candidates and the production elements and images transmitted to the television audience. Both graduate and undergraduate students assisted in organizing and reporting results. Students Audra Kincaid, Alex Novick, Lisanne DiMattia, Ashley Ratka, Amanda Scheffer, Brendan Smyth, Briana Stewart and Dion Suleman assisted faculty member Sue Drucker to put that all together.

Junior Mike Leslie worked with faculty member G. Stuart Smith and producer/director of Hofstra Video Productions Len Thon to produce stories on Democracy in Performance, debate preparations, and what students were doing on debate day.

Wesley Sykes, Jennifer Kauffmann, Adam Malmut, Vincent Mercogliano and dozens more reported in the field or worked in NewsHub covering the event, using flipcams, still cameras, recorders and whatever else could be mustered to capture the sights and sounds of the event for later stories and instant coverage on our Web site, NassauNews.org, with faculty member Mo Krochmal. Several students called it “organized chaos.” Well put.

Dozens of our students and most of our faculty were interviewed by local, national and international media, including C-SPAN, BBC World News Service, China News, the Voice of America, German television, Fox, NY1, WABC-TV, CW 11, MSNBC, WCBS-TV, and the list goes on.

I have included just a relative handful of the students who volunteered to work before, during and after the debate. Give or take 60 million people watched an informative and technically flawless presidential debate ... and many of our students helped make it technically flawless ... and many others spent hours and days reporting on the candidates and the issues.

Let’s do it again.