On July 20, New York Times White House Correspondent Tyler Pager visited the cherubs program to share his experiences reporting on the presidency. Pager, who was a 2012 cherub, credits cherubs for kickstarting his journalism career.
TYLER PAGER: Cherubs is one of those inflection moments where I totally upped my skill set and my horizon in terms of what I could do as a journalist, and it has absolutely been a critical step on the way to the career I have today.
Cherub Ruthie Gravelle said she was impressed by Pager’s talk, which was moderated by Medill Dean Charles Whitaker.
RUTHIE GRAVELLE: Tyler Pager is really cool and interesting, and I sort of knew about him before coming to this. I read his book, and I read a lot of his stuff in the New York Times, and I had heard about him coming to cherubs before, but I didn’t know that that was a recurring thing. It was definitely a nice surprise, and he had a lot of unique insight.
As a White House correspondent, Pager regularly reports on the president.
TYLER PAGER: It is a remarkable privilege to have the opportunity to ask the president and other senior government leaders questions on behalf of the American people. Journalism is a critical part of democracy, and I feel lucky to have a platform and to work for a news organization that is wholly committed to the truth and ascertaining it to the best of our ability for the American people and the world.
For cherub Reanna Lee, seeing the path a fellow cherub took to reach the height of the world of political journalism was inspirational.
REANNA LEE: He’s literally reporting on the White House and things like that. Something as big as the White House, and I feel like for us, even though it may seem like a far away from us, like working at the New York Times, I think it still gives us that kind of perspective of like, this is what you could be doing, or this is what you can do, and things like that in the future if you’re interested, and this program is one step to reaching that.
Pager has one more piece of advice for aspiring student journalists.
TYLER PAGER: Start now. I think one of the most remarkable things about journalism is that you can do it at any stage, at any level, with any tool available to you. So if you are covering student government or city council or state legislature, it does not have to be national political campaigns. Politics have become so nationalized that even school board races play into the trends and mood of the national political climate. And so I would encourage any aspiring journalist or cherub to start doing that reporting in their communities now, because we need that local reporting more than ever.
[CHERUBS AUDIO THEME MUSIC]
Reporting for Cherubs Audio, I’m Clark Kerkstra. See you next time!
Music provided by @prettyjohn1 on Pixabay.
