Humber journalism students on the job live U.S. election night coverage

Students volunteered to interview, write and post updates for the 2024 U.S. election on Nov. 5 at the North campus radio broadcast and newsroom, L building room L225. Students started gathering at 3:30 p.m. and the action plan and roles for the night didn’t start till 4 p.m. 

The newsroom was led by faculty members  Lara King, Terra Ciolfe, Mike Wise, and Rob Lamberti. Lara King has been the program coordinator for the advanced journalism diploma program since 2017. King started off the newsroom meeting, explaining the different roles and coverage students would be working for the night.

“There’s nothing like working to a deadline while news is coming in and producing content while that’s happening. They are going to get an experience that they won’t get in many other environments in school,” King says. Anytime there is an election, there is newsroom coverage put together by faculty to give students live experience. Volunteers created news content for live radio broadcast 96.9 FM Radio Humber and Humber Et Cetera.

The students consisted of first, second and third year students from the advanced journalism diploma program. Also students from the bachelor of journalism program and radio broadcast program.

From 4:30 p.m. till 6:30 p.m. reporters were conducting streeter interviews on campus. Benjamin Steeves is a second-year advanced journalism diploma student. Steeves was the point runner for the reporters doing streeter interviews in the building. “I think women deserve their bodily autonomy, I was very eager to see what would happen. I also want the experience of doing an election. I have never covered one before, so I was eager to try the practice,” Steeves says.

Reporters would ask questions to students about the election in video, or audio form and take photos. As reporters returned, Steeves would collect all the media to start editing and also relayed information to the radio coverage for their reporting. Radio students broadcasted segments with updates on election night every 15 minutes.

There was also a team of students covering a watch party off campus who left at 4:30 p.m. Deon Taylor, a second-year advanced journalism student. Taylor was a point of contact for the reporters off campus covering a watch party with mostly American citizens. “I wanted to look into what a real news day is like. Long hours, real moment-to-moment updates and an atmosphere of a newsroom,” Taylor says.

Taylor would collect information from the reporters on the field, and also relay updates from the newsroom to the field reporters. In addition, Taylor would also conduct interviews with experts in politics, and also relayed information to the radio students as well.

After reporters returned, different news stories for Humber Et Cetera were worked on. Madison Boynton, a second-year advanced journalism student did some streeter interviews, then entered map data after returning to the newsroom. There was a live election map as states were called throughout the night.

The task was to enter data into a spreadsheet with all the states. As soon as a state was declared, Boynton would mark the winner, the time and who declared the state. “I really enjoyed it, all of us media students coming together was a really cool thing to see happen. It makes me excited for the future of journalism and makes me believe I choose the right program,” Boynton says.

Students got some pizza around 7 p.m., and continued working till 11:30 p.m. when live Humber coverage ended. Trump was leading the polls in all news platforms by that time. Trump was first announced as the 47th President-Elect early Wednesday morning around 3 a.m. According to the Associated Press as of Nov. 14, Trump won 312 electoral college votes with 75,870,227 or 50.2 per cent winning the popular vote as well. Harris attained 226 electoral college votes with 72,856,990 votes or 48.2 per cent.