Viral Radio


January 30, 2011

the political pulse with graphical representation of donkey and elephant squaring off with boxing gloves wearing stripes & stars

By Menachem Wecker

When Arizona State Senator Linda Gray (R) seemed to suggest in an interview with the WRGW program The Political Pulse that abortion was to blame for the recent shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.), the comment caught host Andrew Feldman and guest host Daniel Wolman completely off guard.

“It was absolutely surprising to me,” says Mr. Feldman, a senior who has hosted the bipartisan WRGW show for three years. “I was not expecting that to come out of her mouth. I was not expecting to discuss abortion.”

It wasn’t until after the show, when Mr. Feldman and Mr. Wolman, a junior who met Ms. Giffords while working on a campaign in Arizona in 2008, started receiving calls and emails suggesting they send the “outrageous” comments to the press that they realized how controversial the remark was.

Mr. Feldman sent the clip from the WRGW program to Politico, which published a story on Ms. Gray’s remark. According to the news page of the show’s website, the story has since been covered in Huffington Post, Tucson and Phoenix ABC affiliates and the political blog Talking Points Memo.

According to Mr. Feldman, both hosts drew on their training as political communications students at the School of Media and Public Affairs as they navigated the line between broadcast reporting and promoting their story.

Coursework at the school has provided “a lot of great training about how to work with reporters and how to interview subjects,” Mr. Feldman says, as well as study of the evolving role of journalism, where reporters increasingly double as self-publicists.

Mr. Wolman agreed that the School of Media and Public Affairs focuses on the “changing media landscape,” where “things can spread really easily and quickly.”

“Once it got out, it picked up on its own,” he says of the story about Ms. Gray. “It kind of got swept up without us pushing it further.”

Every site that picked the story up had buttons helping readers share the story on social media, which Mr. Feldman says helped the story spread.

“Being able to read a story and push it out to all of your friends in the social media world is really important to getting stories some traction when you don’t have the journalistic name behind it to file it on CNN or MSNBC,” he says.

According to Mr. Feldman, The Political Pulse, which launched five years ago, is the longest running political show on GW radio. The show, which used to be a two-hour discussion, has recently evolved into a program that incorporates interviews.

“We like to hear from both sides of the aisle,” says Mr. Feldman, who has interviewed former Vice President Walter Mondale, former Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis, Sen. Mike Enzi, B.B.A. ‘66 (R-Wyo.), and journalists Tucker Carlson and Thomas Friedman.

The program works with College Republicans and College Democrats, and many of the guests on the show are speakers already coming to campus, says Mr. Feldman, who sees a life lesson in the success of the student-run program.

“Students can make an impact on the political process right away,” he says. “You can be 20, 21 or 18, and people will listen to you.”

Mr. Wolman says he got involved in the program after Mr. Feldman invited him to guest host. “It became a staple of our weekly routine to go on the show,” he says.

The Los Angeles native chose to come to GW, because he was attracted to the School of Media and Public Affairs’ focus on modern campaigning and political thought.

“I really love the idea of blending media and politics and being able to be a journalist or be involved in media while still maintaining a political opinion,” he says.