The 2020 presidential election will be discussed and studied as one of, if not the most, historic elections in U.S. history. Join the Richard T. Robertson School of Media and Culture and VCU Alumni for a discussion with expert journalists, moderated by Robertson School Director Marcus Messner, Ph.D., to review how the COVID-19 pandemic, racial protests, a high unemployment rate, economic uncertainty, identity politics and political behavior shaped the election, as well as the aftermath in what is likely to remain an unsettled political landscape.

Register for the Zoom link.

About the alumni panelists

Sergio Bustos (B.S.’84/MC) is corps excellence regional manager–south for Report for America, a nonprofit organization that seeks to strengthen local newsrooms. Over the span of his career, he reported, wrote and edited for various news organizations, including The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Miami Herald, Politico, USA Today and the South Florida Sun Sentinel. He was a Washington correspondent for the former Gannett News Service and covered the 2016 presidential campaign for The Associated Press. Bustos has won the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism award and was a Pulitzer Prize finalist.

Chandelis Duster (B.S.’10/MC) is a politics reporter for CNN Politics covering breaking news in Washington, D.C. Prior to joining CNN, Duster was a reporter at NBC where she worked for “NBC Nightly News” with Lester Holt, the “Today” show, Morning Joe and numerous other shows. Additionally, she also wrote stories for and managed NBCBLK, a section of NBCNews.com that focuses on the black community. In 2018, Duster received a Salute to Excellence Award from the National Association of Black Journalist as an editor of a feature story on Jamaica's “Barrel Children.”

Mechelle Hankerson (B.S.’13/MC) is a reporter with WHRO in Norfolk, Virginia. Before joining the public broadcasting station to report for radio, Hankerson worked at the nonprofit startup The Virginia Mercury to cover state government. She reported on elections administration, education and tax policy. Her first reporting job was at The News & Observer in North Carolina. She covered crime, housing and the rural outskirts of Raleigh. Afterward, she worked at The Virginian-Pilot, investigating stormwater and recurrent flooding in Virginia Beach after Hurricane Matthew.  

Derick Waller (B.S.’10/MC) is a reporter for “Eyewitness News This Morning” at WABC-TV, the ABC flagship station in New York City. Waller’s journey as a reporter took him to TV stations in Cleveland, Raleigh, North Carolina and Charlottesville, Virginia, which is where he got his start. While in the Southeast and the Midwest, he covered some of the biggest stories of the past decade, including two presidential campaigns in three different swing states. As a reporter in New York, he has been covering one of the hotspots of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. 

About the moderator

Marcus Messner, Ph.D., is director of the VCU Richard T. Robertson School of Media and Culture and professor of journalism. His main research focus is on the influence and adoption of mobile and social media and he has a scholarship record of more than 110 academic publications and presentations at academic conferences. He is an Eminent Scholar in VCU’s College of Humanities and Sciences and received VCU’s Distinguished Teaching Award. He earned his Ph.D. in communication at the University of Miami and previously worked as a politics and business reporter.