Stanford Journalism grads make their mark in politics, policy and breaking news reporting

It was a Sunday in July when news broke that President Joe Biden would end his reelection campaign and urge the Democratic Party to unite behind Vice President Kamala Harris, who hails from the San Francisco Bay Area. Gillian Brassil (MA 2019), a congressional reporter for McClatchy focused on California, was out at lunch in Washington, D.C., but rushed home to start reporting.

"[I] started cranking out stories about reactions to Biden's decisions … trying to get all of the information out as soon as possible,” said Brassil, who not only covers lawmakers from the Central Valley but also federal court cases and other government decisions that impact the Golden State. At the same time, she began to think about “the stories that are going to be most important” to California readers.

In the weeks that followed, Brassil wrote and contributed to stories about Harris's record as the former Attorney General of California. One article dove into her position on water policy and asked farmers from the Central Valley's deep-red, Republican counties how they view the new Democratic presidential nominee. 

"We did a lot of stories about how she's applying her time [in California] as a prosecutor to this moment," Brassil said.  

Brassil is among Stanford Journalism Program graduates in D.C. – the epicenter of politics and policy reporting – during an especially contentious presidential election year full of twists and turns. These journalists say they rely on skills honed at Stanford to bring context and depth to their coverage amid increasing media frenzy surrounding the November election. 

"Stanford Journalism is the reason why I'm able to do what I do today. I attribute my time at Stanford to learning all of these skills on how to be an effective and rigorous journalist," Brassil said. 

Tracy Zhang (MA 2023) didn’t initially envision covering politics immediately after Stanford. But after gaining data journalism skills from Cheryl Phillips and Serdar Tumgoren and immersive storytelling skills in Geri Migliecz's Advanced Multimedia class, Zhang pursued a CNN job opening that included virtual reality and data analysis in the job description. 

Now, Zhang is part of a team producing content for CNN's "Magic Wall," the cable news network's touchscreen technology that annotates and analyzes local and national data during election coverage. In this role, Zhang said she can combine all the technical and storytelling skills she developed at Stanford. 

On a typical day, Zhang uses Excel, Python and SQL to analyze data. On other days, she writes basic code using HTML, CSS or Javascript to create dynamic graphics for stories — skills that she gained in Phillips's data journalism classes and Tumgoren's Building News Apps course. As part of her job, she often searches for new data sets to study and comes up with ideas on which data sets to combine to tell compelling stories to supplement election coverage. 

The role has given Zhang the opportunity to be at the scene of important events, like the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

"I'm learning new things every day, I feel like that's the most exciting part of this job," she said. "I feel like everything I've learned from scratch at Stanford has helped me.” 

Elissa Miolene (MA 2022), who covers global development and U.S. government agencies responsible for foreign aid for DevEx, found her time at Stanford critical in making a career pivot to journalism. Miolene said she was always interested in using her experience working for aid agencies to tell stories about global crises but from a journalistic lens. 

Devex is a media platform that serves the global development community. On any given day, Miolene will observe Capitol Hill hearings or interview top decision makers in the federal government. As the November election approaches, Miolene has worked on stories about how a potential Trump or Harris administration would impact global development and the consequences of proposed changes to USAID outlined in the conservative-led initiative Project 2025.  

"It's really fantastic, it's been interesting, and new to me, to [be reporting] in a city that just has so much power — the regulations coming out of Washington affect the world," she said.  

Miolene said she remembers lessons from professors like Janine Zacharia on sourcing, which helped her "figure out who's the right person to talk to [and] how to tell a story properly." Last month, as Miolene prepared to cover the U.N. General Assembly, she thought of Migliecz's gear checklist when planning the video interviews she would conduct during the event.

"I've got all of my equipment out, thinking of Geri, to make sure I got everything ready to go," she said. 

She said the connections she continues to have with professors have been "invaluable" as she navigates the journalism industry. 

"The professors at Stanford are just unbelievable. They're so happy to help. Even once you exit the halls of the classroom, they continue to help you, however long that might take or however long you might need," Miolene said. 

As a general assignment reporter at The Washington Post, Daniel Wu (MA 2022) covers breaking news events internationally and nationally — from the conflict in the Middle East to national disasters and the latest news from the presidential campaign trail. 

At the same time, Wu has the freedom to come up with ideas for quick-turn and enterprise stories that interest The Post’s audience. 

"I feel really lucky to be here. It's a fun job, [it] has given me a lot of flexibility to do all kinds of stories, to work on my writing and my narrative ability, as well as my breaking news skills," Wu said. 

Wu credits an interview exercise in Gary Pomerantz's Sports Journalism class for helping him prepare to conduct difficult interviews during breaking news situations.

"I can't think of too many other exercises that have been so effective and helpful at just kind of giving me the experience of practicing those kinds of interviews that I do on the spot so frequently," he said.  

Wu said he uses lessons from R.B. Brenner's Narrative Journalism class for enterprise articles, including a story he wrote about a recently opened Chinese-language bookstore. The owner previously had a shop in Shanghai that became known among academics and progressive circles but was shut down due to Chinese government pressure. When the owner relocated thousands of miles away in the D.C. area, he re-established the bookstore. 

"The Chinese community in the city and on the East Coast was really excited," he said. "I felt like I was able to kind of put together a nice D.C. story that also had this connection to China." 

While his focus isn't on political reporting, Wu expects to do some coverage during the November elections. During this year's debate between former President Donald Trump and Harris, Wu went to watch parties to get comments from spectators. He said he'll be expected to do something similar as election results come in. 

"It'll be fun to report on D.C., the city, as it goes through all this," he said. "It feels really fulfilling to be a part of the debate [coverage], to see our teams [cover] those crazy moments in what has been really such a hectic last few months."