J219 MINI – Covering the Second Trump Administration (starts 3/17)

Note: This course has a new course number. It is now a 7-week mini course and will start on March 17, 2025.

Class sessions:

1. March 17
2. March 31
3. April 7
4. April 14
5. April 21
6. April 28
7. May 5

Amid all the post-election doubts and dejection, one truth stands out, apparent and indisputable: The coming months and years will be boom times for political reporting. The Second Trump Administration is certain to bring with it full-on political combat in Washington and elsewhere in the United States. The former and future President has announced what amounts to a second, rather darker American Revolution — complete with mass deportations, political trials, and militarized repression of popular gatherings. How many of these and other audacious initiatives will eventually come to pass is anyone’s guess. What is certain is that those writing on politics will soon be frantic covering vital and consequential stories they had never dreamed possible. It will be a target rich environment for new stories as American politics is stretched and deformed in ways heretofore unimaginable. And it will test our journalistic institutions as never before. In this seminar, we will closely track the Trump Administration and its opposition as they struggle over remaking the country. We will study the coverage of the great battles in Washington and the new approaches the press will test out in covering Trump. And we will immerse ourselves in the broader principles and practices of political reporting, at a time when many of our beliefs about politics and journalism will be put starkly in question. However painful this may be, it is time for proto-political reporters to emerge from the post-election funk and take up arms. “Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,” wrote Wordsworth (thinking of another revolution) — “but to be young was very heaven!”