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Several days a week this spring Ben Bascuk ’27 made his way to Capitol Hill.

With a camera in hand, he attended hearings and press conferences, collecting sound from lawmakers for his internship at Spectrum News and reporting stories for CitrusTV.

In a midterm year, that meant early access to many of the lawmakers gearing up for elections next month.

Having that access to elected officials was an “incredible privilege and a lot of responsibility,” says Bascuk, who is majoring in broadcast and digital journalism in the and policy studies in the.

“We got to interview them firsthand,” he says. “I don’t think that’s a common experience for a junior in college.”

That direct experience is one of the primary goals behind the structure of the Study Away Program and the (IDJC), which connects the Newhouse and Maxwell programs in Washington. Through internships, classes, research and alumni mentoring, the program places student journalists inside the political world they are learning to cover.

The IDJC’s mission, says , Kramer Director of the center and professor of practice, is to examine how the media and political environments shape each other. In a midterm year, helping students understand audience trust, patterns of misinformation and polling only feels more immediate.

“That really helps you understand why people care about one issue more than another, or which segments of society feel one way about an issue,” she says. “We hope having those insights as a sophomore or junior or senior can be a real jumpstart to your career and also deepen the value of what you are bringing to your work early in your career.”

Learning the Beat by Doing It

Learning through firsthand experience is a central pillar of Newhouse DC, which requires students complete a semester-long internship matched to their interest, whether in media, nonprofits, government or public relations.

Through a new partnership with Spectrum News, the program has two dedicated internship slots in Washington with the broadcaster, where students shadow correspondents on the Hill, shoot interviews and produce an end-of-semester package for their reels.

“It’s not something you can learn in the classroom,” says , director of Newhouse DC and a former journalist who spent years covering state and local politics before working at NBC, NPR and PBS in Washington. “They are actually right there on the front lines.”

Megan Acker ’26, who attended the DC program in fall 2025, interned at Spectrum with a congressional press pass and now works for the network as a multimedia journalist in Buffalo, New York.

She recalls “running around the Hill,” interviewing members of Congress, visiting the White House press briefing room and being part of press gaggles to collect sound.

Acker arrived with plans to become a national political correspondent but found she preferred reporting on state and local politics.

“The professional experiences I got were mind-blowing,” she says. “But also, Spectrum cultivates such a caring workforce. Every single person there wanted to make my experience the best they could.”

Research, Media Literacy and Real-Time Lessons

For Talev, a veteran political journalist, another foundation of the program is learning to separate fact from spin, which begins with how students consume news themselves.

In her course Democracy, Journalism and Citizenship, students examine IDJC research on media habits, declining trust, news deserts and misinformation. They build a “DC media diet,” a mix of fact-based reporting and opinion from several perspectives, along with some entertainment and news-adjacent content.

Even a conspiracy website or two can help students understand what drives such theories, Talev says, though not so they embrace them.

Current events serve as case studies, and Talev pushes students to think about what their audiences trust and care about most. Since 2024, the IDJC has run an ongoing with NBC News and the research firm /, and students have helped shape questions and watched sessions live. Talev says watching voters explain beliefs different from their own was a light bulb moment for many.

Bascuk says a class—Psychology of Political Communication taught by , associate professor of communication and senior researcher in the IDJC—on how voters get information and whom they trust was invaluable. Acker says a classroom lesson on copyright law connected quickly to a question at her internship about whether footage could be used legally.

Access to Mentors and Building a Network

Every student is paired with an alumni mentor or, when needed, a “friend of Newhouse,” working in their area of interest. Mentors give students someone besides a professor to ask questions, and Kirk says they provide the “building blocks of a network.”

Bascuk’s mentor was ’98, a former CBS News correspondent and current anchor of “Scott MacFarlane Reports” and chief Washington correspondent for MeidasTouch Network. MacFarlane gave him a tour of the CBS News Washington studios, let him try an anchor read and offered career advice. Bascuk says Syracuse connections were everywhere at his summer internship with NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Class site visits have included NBC, the Pentagon, Politico and Nexstar, and the DC Center hosts a Monday night event series.

“If you’re able to do a full semester in DC and you’re interested in covering politics, there is no substitute for being here,” Talev says. “You will get a handful of professors who’ve done the work themselves and can really be a great guide for you. If you are a student who cannot come for a full semester, we are building more and more opportunities to come for compressed periods of time—spring break, Maymester, summer sessions. Take advantage of those.”

Kirk agrees there is no substitute for being in the nation’s capital.

“I tell every student, you may not be interested in politics, but politics is interested in you and will be for your entire life,” she says. “Do yourself a favor, come spend a semester in Washington, learn how this city works. It doesn’t mean you ever have to come back here to live or make a career, if that’s not what you want. But you will have learned how everything works in a city where the decisions that are made impact you, even if you never intend to work in politics or cover politics.”