On Monday evening, dozens of community members flocked to the Watson Institute’s Joukowsky Forum to hear from reporter Olivia Beavers, one of Politico’s premier congressional correspondents covering House Republicans and GOP leadership.
The talk, moderated by Wendy Schiller, the interim director of the Watson Institute, kicked off the inaugural Paolino Speaker Series event.
Beavers’s first day covering the House for Politico was Jan. 3, 2021, three days before the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
“I lived through the January 6 insurrection,” Beavers said at the beginning of her talk. She believed that the “House chamber was the safe room, and it was designed to be where you seek refuge if there was an attack. But we weren’t prepared for a mob attack; we were prepared for a lone terrorist sort of attack.”
Beavers sat down with Schiller to share advice for up-and-coming journalists and provide a look behind the scenes of congressional reporting.
She first became interested in journalism, she said, after an inaccurate story about her community was published. “It was a news story that ended up not being true, and I remember feeling frustrated about the coverage,” Beavers said.
At the end of college, she decided to pursue journalism professionally. But it took her ten months to land a job at CNN. “Boy, did I not know what I was signing up for,” Beavers joked. “When you’re getting your foot in the door, you are not working a nine-to-five. You do not have access to your weekends. You are a very flaky friend, and you are just trying to survive on basically minimum wage as a reporter.”
Beavers later left CNN to work for The Hill, a smaller publication that focuses on Capitol Hill. In her talk, she recommended the outlet to young journalists who want to break into D.C. Hill coverage.
“My advice to aspiring journalists is to go for the places where you’re going to be handed the opportunities, not for the flashiness,” Beavers said. For newer reporters, Beavers said that covering lower-stakes news is essential because it allows them to learn from their mistakes.
Throughout the talk, Beavers spoke repeatedly about the importance of connecting with members of Congress and staffers. She frequently allows people to talk to her on background and makes it clear to sources that their conversations are off-the-record unless they’ve reached an explicit agreement to speak on-the-record. She can then use that to inform her reporting and paint a clearer picture.
The conversation then turned to the political dynamics in the House.
In high-profile hearings, the goal among politicians becomes about generating a “social media clip that they can post online and go viral,” Beavers said.
Beavers also said she believes it is unlikely for there to be another insurrection of Jan. 6 scale in 2025.
“Security is ready. They're not going to be caught off guard, and we’re expecting the Capitol to be very intensely covered with Capitol police and local police and other folks,” Beavers said.
Christopher Ho ’27 attended the talk and asked Beavers about the dynamics of off-the-record conversations.
Sources tell reporters things for various reasons, Beavers replied. They leak information because they know it will inevitably get out. Hence, they want to control the narrative and paint themselves well.
Also present at the talk was former U.S. Representative David Cicilline, who recently joined Brown’s Corporation. “I got to see her every day that I was in Congress, and I always found her to be excellent in terms of her coverage. She had tremendous integrity,” Cicilline told The Herald. “She was persistent and dogged in her work, but always fair and I think one of the most respected journalists in Washington.”
Talia LeVine is a section editor covering arts and culture. They study Political Science and Visual Art with a focus on photography. In their free time, they can be found drinking copious amounts of coffee.
