On a Friday afternoon in the basement of Harrison Hall, Alexa Bonilla scoots back in her studio chair and stands up, announcing to her team, “All right, it’s time to run through the show.”
The 2024 presidential election is Nov. 5 and Breeze TV, JMU’s student-run news program, will be covering the results live, while The Breeze newspaper will report the results from Democratic and Republican watch parties and panels in Harrisonburg.
“This is a really big election for JMU students,” said Bonilla, the news director for Breeze TV. “It’s our first presidential election for most or all JMU students. We’re also going to have unique content because of the work that some of our students have done at the Republican and Democratic national conventions.”
In her role, Bonilla reviews scripts, edits stories and makes sure Breeze TV is “producing ethical content.” She also guides and mentors reporters and production staff to ensure that everyone stays on task.
Bonilla and Abby Allard are the anchors for this election broadcast. They attended the parties’ national conventions over the summer and gathered their own footage. “For some of us, this is the president that we will be graduating and getting a job under,” Bonilla emphasized.
While the election show will focus on the presidential race, the team will also cover Harrisonburg City Council elections, as well as the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives races.
On election night, The Breeze and its editors will support Breeze TV. “We have people in the back rooms helping crunch numbers, updating the website, putting articles online and overall filling in those blind spots that Breeze TV might’ve had,” said Eleanor Shaw, editor-in-chief at The Breeze. Leading up to the election, The Breeze staff have been covering events with the candidates, including Sen. Tim Kaine’s visit to campus in September.
Breeze TV and The Breeze have held weekly executive-board meetings leading up to the election show. “Election season is an all-hands-on-deck situation,” Shaw said. About 50% of election coverage happens before Election Day and about 50% after, she explained.
Streaming live on YouTube and Facebook, the election coverage will also upload directly after the show. Breeze TV has published pre-election content on Instagram and will produce more as a recap after the election. The Breeze also published an article on Javier Calleja, a Spanish professor who is running for Harrisonburg City Council.
“It’ll be interesting for people to watch the election show, because we have a lot of great content from the conventions,” Bonilla said. “We interviewed professors at other universities; we interviewed senators and delegates. So, we’re going to have a lot of different perspectives this year talking about the presidential election, but we’ll also be focusing on the elections in Harrisonburg too. There’s going to be a lot of diverse content this year, and it’s going to be beneficial to students and locals.”
Breeze TV will also cover third-party candidates in Harrisonburg and statewide elections. For the presidential race election show, Bonilla’s team plans to feature special districts in battleground states and report on the home states of many Dukes, like New Jersey.
“It’s definitely exciting to get a front-row seat to history for my first presidential election and to cover it as a journalist, but to also be a voter and a student,” she said.
