UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Three Penn State alumni who have covered the presidential campaigns since the start of the election cycle will participate in a panel discussion about the election and related media coverage at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 15, in Freeman Auditorium of the HUB-Robeson Center on the University Park campus.
The post-election panel — titled “A Campaign to Remember: From the Primaries to the Presidency with Penn State Alumni — is free and open to the public. The panelists all earned their journalism degrees from the University. They are:
- Kevin Cirilli (Class of 2012) of Bloomberg News;
- Casey McDermott (Class of 2013) of New Hampshire Public Radio; and
- Anna Orso (Class of 2014) of BillyPenn.com
Russ Eshleman, head of the Department of Journalism, will moderate the session, which will include time for audience questions.
“This is great for our students — to hear from three reporters who were in the thick of the presidential campaign,“ Eshleman said. “And the fact that these reporters are three of our own, not to mention not much older than our students, makes this even better.”
Cirilli is a political reporter for Bloomberg News, where he was embedded with the Trump campaign. He represents Bloomberg cross-platform in its online properties, print wire publications and television network. Before joining Bloomberg, he worked at The Hill and Politico, specializing in Congressional financial services. Prior to coming to Washington, he covered the Jerry Sandusky scandal for Newsweek/The Daily Beast and Philadelphia Magazine.
While at Penn State, Cirilli was a recipient of the Damon M. Chappie Award for Investigative Journalism and was campus editor of The Daily Collegian. Cirilli was a Pulliam Fellow of Journalism at The Arizona Republic and the Columbia Scholastic Press Association ranked him the No. 1 undergraduate news writer in the nation in 2011.
McDermott has reported on air and online about the election for the past year, focusing primarily on state policy and politics. Before joining New Hampshire Public Radio, she worked as a reporter for the Concord Monitor, covering politics, health and other local issues in New Hampshire’s capital region.
McDermott completed post-graduate internships for the Chronicle of Higher Education and ProPublica after her Penn State career when she worked as a reporter and editor, eventually serving as managing editor and editor-in-chief, of The Daily Collegian. During her time as a senior editor, the Collegian earned national recognition from the Associated Collegiate Press, College Media Matters and the Columbia Scholastic Press Association, among others.
Orso is a reporter/curator for Billy Penn, where she writes about everything from the presidential race and local politics to criminal justice and quirky feature stories. She’s a former reporter for The Harrisburg Patriot-News/PennLive.com where she worked in a digital-first environment covering crime and courts. While in Harrisburg, Orso produced enterprise pieces along with breaking news.
At Penn State, Orso worked for The Daily Collegian, eventually serving as managing editor. She also participated in the William Randolph Hearst Foundation’s Journalism Awards Program, often called “the Pulitzers of college journalism, twice as a Penn State student. In 2012, she won first place in the breaking news category and in 2014 she won winning first place in the sports category. Her story about the dark side of college football recruiting was named the national “Article of the Year” by the Hearst Foundation, and she placed first in the individual national championships.