The faculty

The class was developed in 2007 by Dotty Lynch, formerly with CBS News and the first woman named to be named chief polltaker for a presidential campaign; Lynne Perri, formerly with USA TODAY as deputy managing editor for graphics and photography and a former reporter and editor at several newspapers; Bill Gentile, a photographer and videographer whose credits include Newsweek, Time and other major media; and Richard Benedetto, who covered presidential campaigns and the White House for USA TODAY for more than 20 years.

 

2016 Faculty

Richard Benedetto

Richard Benedetto is an adjunct professor in the School of Communication and the School of Public Affairs. He is a retired White House correspondent and columnist for USA TODAY and political columnist for Gannett News Service. He reported on local, state and national government and politics for 40 years and continues to write political commentary for publications such as Politico, The Hill and USA TODAOY. He covered the White House during the administrations of Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush and has covered every national political convention since 1972 and every presidential campaign since 1984.

Bill Gentile

 Bill Gentile is an independent journalist and documentary filmmaker and journalist in residence in the School of Communication. His career spans four decades, five continents and nearly every facet of journalism and mass communication, most especially visual communication, or visual storytelling. He is also the founder and director of American University’s Backpack Journalism Project, and author of the “Essential Video Journalism Field Manual.” In 2015, he engineered the School of Communication’s partnership with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting and is the driving force behind that initiative. His recent work includes the 2015 documentary, “Afghan Dreams,” which he shot, produced and wrote, about four Afghan female law students who defy all odds to compete in the world’s most important competition of international commercial law.

He began in 1977 as reporter for the Mexico City News and correspondent for United Press International (UPI) based in Mexico City, and covered the 1979 Sandinista Revolution in Nicaragua. He spent two years as editor on UPI’s Foreign Desk in New York, then moved to Nicaragua and became Newsweek Magazine’s Contract Photographer for Latin America and the Caribbean. He shared the Robert F. Kennedy Award for Human Rights Reporting, Honorable Mention, for a story on rape during the 1994 Rwanda Genocide. He also shared two National Emmy Awards and was nominated for two others.

Carrie Giddins Pergram

Carrie Giddins Pergram is a political consultant and professor of political communication in the School of Public Affairs and the School of Communication at American University. Since 2008, Pergram has worked at her own consulting firm, Giddy Up! Communications. She has a variety of national and international political clients, in addition to work she does for non-profits and private companies.

In February 2008, Pergram was named the political operative to watch by Politico and in June 2008, a Campaigns and Elections Magazine Rising Star.

Pergram held the position of communications director for the Iowa Democratic Party for the 2008 Iowa Caucuses, helping run the most successful and most widely attended caucuses in history. In 2006, she worked as the deputy communications director for EMILY’s List, a PAC dedicated to electing democratic women to office. In 2004, she was the deputy communications director for John Kerry’s presidential campaign in Iowa.

Pergram has also done stints on the Hill, at political consulting firms, at direct mail firms, at a national non-profit and at a national party committee.

Betsy Fischer Martin

Betsy Fischer Martin, an Emmy Award-winning political television producer, is an executive in residence in the School of Public Affairs at American University, contributing to the Political Communications curriculum and working with the school on external events.

Fischer Martin spent 23 years at NBC News serving most recently as managing editor of NBC Political Programming, where she provided editorial direction for all political coverage at NBC.  For 11 years as executive producer of “Meet the Press,” she oversaw editorial content, guest-selection, strategic planning, production of in-depth interviews, marketing, and financial decision-making.  She also served as Tim Russert’s and Tom Brokaw’s political producer, covering the last six presidential campaigns and producing several television debates.

Among her many accolades, Fischer Martin has earned two News and Documentary Emmys, the Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Political Journalism and a Gracie Award from American Women in Radio and Television. In 2008, the World Economic Forum welcomed her into the class of Young Global Leaders.

Fischer Martin is also MORE magazine’s Washington contributing editor; co-hosts a podcast on politics, called Trail Talk; and has her own consulting practice representing media companies.

Molly O’Rourke

Molly O’Rourke is an executive in residence in the School of Communication at American University. She has more than 15 years’ experience in the field of public opinion research, most recently as a partner at Peter Hart Research in Washington, DC. She has directed multiphase qualitative and quantitative research for variety of issue advocacy and nonprofit organizations, trade associations, political candidates and parties, and media outlets, including NBC News and The Wall Street Journal, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and Planned Parenthood. Molly has worked on Capitol Hill as an aide to U.S. Senator Frank R. Lautenberg (D-NJ) and has been part of multiple statewide campaigns as a staff member at EMILY’s List, the women’s political action committee. She has also served as an analyst for the Center for Public Interest Polling at Rutgers University’s Eagleton Institute.

For several years, she co-wrote a monthly column about politics and public opinion titled “Behind the Numbers” for The Hill, a Capitol Hill newspaper. She has taught courses on research methodology as an adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University and guest lectured on research and communication at Duke University, Brown University, and the University of Pennsylvania.

Lynne Perri

Lynne Perri is a journalist in residence in the School of Communication and managing editor of the Investigative Reporting Workshop, a nonprofit news organization that pairs graduate-student researchers with professional reporters at The Washington Post, FRONTLINE and other publishing partnerships. She oversees and edits the projects, stories and visual journalism developed at the Workshop, which is based in SOC.

She is a former deputy managing editor for Graphics and Photography at USA TODAY, where she conceptualized illustrations, graphics, maps and photo packages for all sections of the newspaper and website and wrote features and book reviews. She is a former reporter and editor at The Tampa Tribune, the Tallahassee Democrat and the Clearwater Sun.

She has been an adjunct professor at Syracuse, Northwestern, the University of Maryland and the University of South Florida, and a visiting lecturer at the University of Iowa, Ohio University and the University of Nebraska. She has led workshops for The Washington Post, the Knight Center for International Journalists, the American Press Institute and the Society for News Design.