LSU journalism students head north to cover Iowa caucuses

Two dozen students from LSU’s Manship School of Mass Communication will leave Baton Rouge for Des Moines on Friday to get a firsthand look at the Iowa presidential caucuses. The students—mostly journalism and political communication majors—will spend four days attending candidate rallies and events and will meet with a variety of Iowa political figures and national journalists. In addition to producing news content for LSU’s student newspaper, the Daily Reveille, and Tiger TV, the students will provide video and photos of campaign events to a political blog hosted by the Washington Post. Aside from candidate rallies, the students will meet with the chairs of the Iowa Democratic and Republican parties, as well as with the Iowa state director for President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign and legendary Iowa political columnist David Ypsen. A briefing from the editors and reporters of the state’s major daily newspaper, the Des Moines Register is also planned, and the students will attend a broadcast of MSNBC’s Morning Joe and a round-table discussion by national journalists hosted by Politico.com. The trip will culminate on Tues., Jan. 4, when the students will travel to a Des Moines-area high school to observe a caucus in action. Accompanying the students will be Manship faculty members Bob Mann, Bob Ritter and Erin Coyle, as well as Reilly Center program coordinator Emily Tiller. You can keep up with the students’ activities by following a blog created for the trip at www.iowaofthetiger.com.