To trace the campaign trail, to challenge the limits

By Wen Xin

Behind a high-raised iron stand up stage, there was a long, plain white table with a line of laptops and some clumps of electric wires. Compared with loud music and talking out of the stage, this place seemed pretty quiet and few people talked with each other. Instead, they all watched at the screen with earphones and typed very fast to finish the articles.

This was one of the media centers in a New Hampshire primary election campaign activity. In the week before, all the media gathered around in different activities to report the first-hand information for their audiences.

Spending a whole week here to report the first primary election, was half excited, half nervous. New Hampshire is a battlefield, not only for the competitive Presidential candidates, but also for hundreds of media people and practitioners.

New Hampshire primary election is the first primary for American presidential election. The momentum of New Hampshire weighs much more than winning delegations in the election.

Former State Secretary Hillary Clinton was one of them. Clinton held at least one campaign activity per day before the primary election day. Most of the activities she held tried to win the trust of young persons and women. On a canvass activity on February 5 at YWCA in Manchester, a place that only could hold about 100 people, CNN, NBC, New York Times and Washington Post all crowded in.

Another Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders seemed not to have so many renowned supporters. But he developed strength from the grassroots and a large group of young students. Sanders claimed himself a “democratic socialist” and always talked about his position against the Wall Street fundraisers.

Concord, capital of New Hampshire and Manchester, the biggest city of the state, became the busy centers. Each high school, community college, and university was a place for the candidates to hold venues.

A group of 230 high school students from the New York City, led by their teachers to watch the primary election and the American University’s undergraduate journalism students gathered to do the reporting.

The cities were a party place and a ideal place to practice political reporting. The experience challenged their limits, but made them more brave and confident.

( Author: Wen Xin is a student from Newhouse School of Public Communications in Syracuse University )