Students in Danbury Cover the State Polls With WCSU’s ‘Election Connection’

Since 2011, Western Connecticut State University has been broadcasting Election Connection, a collective of students majoring in communications who cover state elections. The program has won media awards in the past, and is ready for 2016.

Election Connection first started Fall 2011 at Westconn in a course called COM: 394 News & Live Election Coverage. In WCSU's OpenClose link, the course description was:

This course offers students the opportunity to study current communication issues in depth. Course may be repeated for credit as long as course topic is different.

Professor JC Barone guided his class to broadcast state election coverage out of Charter's Newtown TV studio. Students conducted field reporting from various political headquarters throughout Connecticut via Skype and Charter's TV studio. Professors from WCSU's political and communication departments reported live from the news desk. Election Eleven was televised November 8, 2011 8pm-11pm on Charter channel 21, WCSU's livestream, and campus radio station, WXCI.

Professor Barone earned a 2012 Telly Award for a half-hour broadcast with the same group of students earlier in that year called, Good Evening, Connecticut. 

In 2012, the program's name changed to Election Connection, and focused more on audience engagement by adding a Facebook page, Twitter account, and an on-campus viewing party, which took place in WCSU's Westside Ballroom.

Election Connection 2012 earned two awards -- a bronze Telly Award and Communicator Award of Distinction for its innovation using IT in programming. Also, the Broadcast Education Association (BEA) awarded Professor Barone and his students at the 2015 Festival of Media Arts convention in Las Vegas, which is an annual educational trip for selected WCSU Communication students.

Current WCSU courses, COM 247: Live News & Election Coverage and COM 270: Fundamentals of Radio Broadcasting, taught by radio professional Tom Zarecki are preparing for Election Connection 2016. The broadcast will take place Tuesday, November 8 from 8pm-12am.