Kevin Palomino, a student reporter for University of Oklahoma's Gaylord News in Washington program, interviewed Rep. Kevin Hern, R-Oklahoma, on Capitol Hill last fall. (Photo courtesy Maddy Keyes)

By Dominic Minadeo

In December 2016, the last reporter covering Washington D.C. for Oklahoma retired — and with that, a crucial line connecting Capitol Hill to the state was severed.

But only for two years. Professors, student journalists and funders mobilized. A local philanthropic foundation empowered two professors and the University of Oklahoma with bringing congressional coverage back to Oklahomans.

“They were just struck by the fact that no one was covering the delegation in Washington or paying attention to Oklahoma issues,” said John Schmeltzer, a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and co-founder of the program.

In 2018, Gaylord News in Washington was born. And since that launch, the program has added a statewide news network and a broadcast bureau. It partnered with seven television stations, more than 70 newspapers and about 10 tribal newspapers, Schmeltzer said. The student-run outlet provides content for over 3.4 million Okalahomans, according to the website.

The school, Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communications, is ranked as the second best journalism program in the country, according to the 2023 Broadcast Education Association.

The Washington program was just the beginning

Capitol News

The Inasmuch Foundation, founded by Edith Kinney Gaylord, a longtime journalist and the first female on the general news staff for the Associated Press, funded the program’s start.

Gaylord News in Washington sends three to four student reporters to Congress every semester where they live and attend classes, Schmeltzer said.

“We had three students there last semester,” he said. “They spent 21 days in the tunnels underneath the Capitol along with the Republicans while the Republicans were fighting over who was going to be the next Speaker of the House.”

The students, usually a mix of broadcast and newswriters, work with professional journalists on the Hill and graduate with a competitive resume.

“What it does is once they hit Washington, all those kids go on to be really successful,” said Mike Boettcher, the program’s co-founder and longtime broadcast journalist. “Because suddenly they're out of Oklahoma and they're in the middle of the news universe … so the light bulb always goes on for them and it makes a huge difference in their trajectory once they graduate and how people look at them and hire them.”

Boettcher’s spent over three decades around the world as an international correspondent for NBC News and CNN. According to his Gaylord College biography Boettcher "is recognized as one of the world’s most experienced foreign correspondents, covering wars and revolutions in every part of the globe."

And in 2019, he thought the program could do more.

That year, Boettcher realized he wanted to cover statewide issues in Oklahoma — the state that he grew up in. A year after Gaylord News in Washington’s launch, he and Schmeltzer founded Gaylord News in Oklahoma.

“He said he wanted to expand it in the state, and I said, ‘Oh, whoopee,’” Schmeltzer said of Boettcher. “So then we started this, and I said, if we’re going to go and do this, I want to try to do something big.”

‘Something Big’

The result: a 41-article series, called "Exiled to Indian Country."

"Exiled to Indian Country" tells the story of all 39 Native American tribes in Oklahoma. The project includes a story of every tribe told by student reporters. Every story leads with a picture of the tribe’s symbol and some include supplemental photos and drawings. The series features a map of the diaspora of every tribe across the United States, including tracing the Trail of Tears to Oklahoma.

Combined, 24 student journalists from the University of Oklahoma and five student journalists across three other universities in the state wrote the comprehensive series. Schmeltzer said they recruited three other colleges that partnered with Gaylord News for the project. 

“I've always had the wonder of how did all the 39 tribes from all around the country end up in Oklahoma?” Schmeltzer asked. “I knew some of the history, but I didn't know each tribe's history.”

In 2019, Schmeltzer stepped into a room filled with the leaders of the five biggest Native American tribes in the state at their quarterly meeting. He recalls being the only white guy in the room. To him, it seemed a daunting task — convincing tribe leaders to trust him and his students with their stories.

One Cherokee man stood up and “just absolutely went after me,” Schmeltzer said. The Cherokee man told Schmeltzer they would never allow a white man to tell their story. He could never understand their struggle.

But a woman of the Cherokee tribe stepped in. She “absolutely tore him apart,” Schmeltzer said. She told the other leaders that if this was the only way they’d get to tell their stories the way they want them to be told, then this was the way to do it.

“She made the difference,” he said. “Without her, it wasn’t going to happen.”

Schmeltzer said the Cherokee tribe gave him the nod following the outburst. After the Cherokees, the rest of the main tribes agreed, and a sort of snowballing effect occurred.

“Once those five biggest tribes signed on, the little tribes across the state all said yes,” Schmeltzer said.

After months of reporting, the series dropped in March 2020 — just in time for the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We had all this content and all of a sudden the pandemic hit,” Schmeltzer said. He added, “We were producing content when no one else was producing content, and so it really was heavily used across the state. It's still in use today.”

As a result, Schmeltzer said "Exiled to Indian Country" has the highest number of site visits out of any of the Gaylord College website pages, including Gaylord News itself. A high school teacher told him the series is used as a teaching aid across the state.

Statewide News

There are around 350 journalism majors at the University of Oklahoma. Among the long list of newspapers, tribal papers and television networks that partner with the program, students can produce content for major outlets like Cronkite News and Indian Country Today. 

Gaylord News in Oklahoma is focused on meaningful stories, rather than breaking news, Boettcher said.

“In no way are we doing a story a day, but we try to pump out, you know, a couple of stories a week,” he said.

Normally there are 10 to 15 students in the newsroom per semester, he said. They enroll in a journalism practicum and receive course credit. Students pitch stories and receive deadlines like they would at a professional outlet. Once they’re filed, the stories are sent to all the partners.

“We have our little distribution system that runs off of Google Drive,” Boettcher said. “That is basically our wire service. And when we have something, we send out notifications to our clients with the link.”

They also have a bureau in Lawton, Oklahoma, that broadcast students can work for during a semester. They drive down on Friday and work through Sunday, Boettcher said. Through grant funding, they get paid for their work.

“We move the money over to Gray television and then Gray television hires them because they're a national employer,” Boettcher said. “So when (the students are) coming out and graduating they already have commercial television experience.”

Boettcher said he wants to continue to expand the program going forward, but with students other than journalists. There are a lot of other moving parts to the newsroom, he said.

“Inside our college, there are all the different disciplines that would make a newspaper work; you know, there's graphic design there, there's sales, there's marketing,” he said.

He added, “What I want to do next year is take the steps in creating a pool of talent in the station that can assist newspapers with their layout, design, with their sales.”