WFU students will see familiar bylines in a variety of publications in the run-up to the 2020 election. Jordan Green, a senior editor at the Triad City Beat, has been publishing in The Daily Beast, Triad City Beat, and Indy Week. Meanwhile, Barry Yeoman, a freelance magazine journalist based in Durham, is covering North Carolina election-related news for The Washington Post. Both have published articles about the demonstrations in Graham, N.C., where local police pepper-sprayed groups of voters on Saturday.

In spring 2020, Green taught a deep dive in investigative journalism, leading a group of students writing an article on low-income housing in Winston-Salem. Yeoman has been teaching Magazine Writing at Wake since 2018.

Despite their decades of experience, the combination of a pandemic and charged election have posed new challenges for Green and Yeoman.

“In 2020, we’ve watched the pandemic roll into a summer of turbulent protests, and that roll into a volatile election season. It’s hard to process as a human being, and challenging to figure out where the story is going from one day to the next. But it feels like a tremendous privilege to live this difficult reality alongside the people we cover, and also provide as clear an account of it as possible,” Green said. 

“The pandemic has made it hard for many journalists, including myself, to report from the field,” Yeoman said. “The past week has reminded me how essential human contact is when reporting the news, and how much sustenance I receive from pulling up a front-row seat to people’s lives.”