Student journalism students covered historic Legislature

A team of students from the Manship School of Mass Communication at LSU/Baton Rouge has been covering the Louisiana Legislature from Baton Rouge for the Eunice News
They reported on the First Special Session, the Regular Session, and the Second Special Session that spanned 19 consecutive weeks, spanning three calendar seasons, from Feb. 14 to just shy of midnight Thursday. It was the longest consecutive sitting of the Legislature in its 204-year history.
It is part of a Field Experience class project that opened at the Statehouse in February. Ten student reporters began the program, devoting one to two days a week to coverage. It covered the Legislature for 10 daily newspapers and three twice-weeklies.
On May 1, the final week of school, the team dropped to three full-time reporters who were enrolled at the Manship School: Justin DiCharia, who graduated in May and is heading to law school; Jack Richards, who graduates in August and will go on to law school; and Samuel Carter Karlin, who will be a senior next year and intends on a career in daily journalism.
The Field Experience Class, which began in 2008, is directed by James Shelledy, who joined the Manship faculty in 2005 after a career as a reporter and editor of daily newspapers.
The Field Experience Class has four divisions: the Statehouse Bureau, the Cold Case Civil Rights-era Murders Project, the Wrongful Convictions Project, and a general reporting bureau for some 20 newspapers and television stations.
The Statehouse Bureau, which has an office on the ground floor of the Louisiana Capitol Building, will be back in service next spring.