White House Correspondent Chuck Todd Visits GW Hillel

By Dzhuletta Avanesian

NBC White House Correspondent Chuck Todd received a GW Hillel t-shirt following his talk Friday night.

Photo Credit: Justin Solar

Chuck Todd, the Chief White House Corresponded for NBC News and the host of The Daily Rundown on MSNBC visited GW Hillel for Shabbat dinner on Friday night .

Todd spoke before a large group of students on his time at GW from 1990-1994, during which he majored in political science and minored in music. 

Todd discussed why he loved GW and one of his favorite aspects of being a student. 
"[It's] an automatic way to get an internship," he said.

Todd started his political work in D.C. while enrolled at GW.  Legendary NBC journalist Tim Russert personally offered him the Political Director position at NBC in 2007 . In 2008, Todd became the White House Correspondent as well as the Contributing Editor to Meet the Press.

Students asked Todd a variety of questions including  the relationship he has with other correspondents covering the White House. 

“We spend a lot of time together and it is a friendly competition," Todd said.  "Some of my closest friends are my competitors." 

On the role of digital journalism, Todd said Twitter's importance should not be minimized as a way to gather information but that the public should realize  journalists reporting breaking news through social media are reporting information "in the raw."  

Todd  went into this point in-depth.  He said journalists giving details of breaking news on Twitter are responding to the public's expectation to learn everything in real-time.  He said the public should understand that journalists are many times still in the news-gathering process  when they report breaking news on social media.  

      

Still, Todd feels the future is brighter for journalism than many others think.  He explained the current media environment is perfect for young entrepreneurial people who could form their own media businesses covering news, for example local news, that many current media companies ignore.