White House Pool Reports News

The White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA) has a long-established press corps, in which a smaller group of reporters follows the U.S. President— from the Oval Office, to Air Force One, to his motorcade—and disseminates their written pool reports to the rest of the press corps. These reports can turn into front-page news, but plenty of what’s documented never gets national coverage. Still, the reports are a valuable view into the day-to-day workings of the White House and a fascinating repository of historical record. In 2018, the University of Maryland Libraries—in partnership with…

Name: Katherine Mahoney Year in school: Junior Major: Journalism and Studio Art Hometown: Brookeville, MD Katherine is a staff writer for HerCampus at the University of Maryland and has written for the Diamondback, the Beacon, Mitzpeh and more!  She took the first-place award for a topical issue from the North American Mature Publishers Association in 2022 for the piece published in the Beacon. She just finished my fall semester interning at Modern Luxury.  From art to human interest stories, she hopes to shed light on stories or people often forgotten in news.…

Helen Thomas was one of the most prolific and revered members of the White House Correspondents Association (WHCA). Throughout her 70-year career, Thomas garnered a reputation that earned her the title of “Sitting Buddha” and “First Lady of The Press” among her peers in the WHCA.  Getting her start in the District with Washington Daily News, Thomas quickly moved on to United Press International (UPI) and began covering John F. Kennedy during his 1960 presidential campaign. Thomas became a White House Correspondent following Kennedy’s election, making her the first female reporter to…

Name: Erin Harper Year in school: Senior Major: Multiplatform Journalism Hometown: Washington, D.C. Erin is a member of the National Association of Black Journalists. She writes short articles, some of which have been published in small media outlets.  She has worked for national and international news organizations, including PBS as a special projects intern, CNN as a digital productions intern and The Washington Post as a multiplatform production intern. Also, she has worked as a video production intern at NASA.  She looks forward to graduating in May 2023. She is seeking a…

Robert Crilly is a British-Irish journalist currently based in the United States. Crilly was educated at Downing College in Cambridge, England, before beginning his career as a reporter. He eventually assumed the role of Edinburgh Bureau Chief for The Telegraph before departing to work as a correspondent in East Africa for The Times and then for The Telegraph. After his time in Africa, Crilly moved to New York to work as a freelance reporter and editor for several publications. Crilly was hired by the Washington Examiner in 2019 to cover the Trump Administration and remained in that post…

Elizabeth Crisp is a reporter based in Washington, DC. Crisp earned her B.A. in communications with a concentration in journalism from Mississippi State University, where she served as editor-in-chief for the campus newspaper, The Reflector. She then remained in Mississippi to cover state politics for The Clairion-Ledger and then for USA Today. Crisp joined The Advocate newspaper in 2013 to cover the state capitol in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. In 2019, she was reassigned to be The Advocate’s Washington, DC correspondent, and went on to assume the same position at Newsweek one year later. Crisp…

University of Maryland alumnus John A. Jenkins ’72, an accomplished publisher, journalist, author and entrepreneur, has donated a collection of historic papers to UMD Libraries documenting his remarkable career. The papers contain historical primary-source documents, and hundreds of hours of historical audio and video relating to major events of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, including interviews with Supreme Court Justices. The John A. Jenkins Papers comprise Jenkins’ body of work spanning more than a half-century in journalism and entrepreneurship. The archive includes…

Name: Ava Thompson Year in school: Sophomore Major: Multiplatform Journalism Minor: Science, Technology, Ethics and Policy (S.T.E.P.) Hometown: Chicago, IL Ava is a producer for Capital News Service, a video production intern for the university's office of marketing and communications, a replay operator for Big Ten Network Plus and a member of the National Press Photographers Association. Also, she is a camera operator for Veritas Films, a short film club on campus. She helped cover the 2022 local, state and federal midterm elections for the Diamondback after being on the housing,…

Pool Reports from November 2020 through January 2021 have been uploaded.  This is the period between the 2020 Presidential Election and the Inauguration of the 46th United State President Joseph Biden.  It details former President Donald J. Trump's actions during a period his campaign was trying to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power, seriously threatening the American democratic system.

Connie Lawn, a freelance broadcast journalist and 40-year member of the White House press corps, died April 2, 2018, at her home in Falls Church, Va. She was 73. The cause was a rare form of Parkinson’s disease, said her husband, Dr. Charles Sneiderman. Ms. Lawn founded her own one-woman news bureau, Audio Visual News, which had radio clients around the world, including networks in Britain, Canada, Australia, Israel and South Africa. Ms. Lawn said she had created her own company in order to maintain her independence and pursue stories that interested her. She was especially popular in New…

The White House Correspondents' Association and the University of Maryland today announced the creation of a unique new window into the world of the president and the press — a permanent and ongoing digital, searchable archive of presidential pool reports produced by White House correspondents. The collection will be produced through a partnership between the WHCA, the University of Maryland — including the Philip Merrill College of Journalism, the University Libraries and the College of Information Studies — and the Newseum Institute. The presidential pool reports are…

Robert Thompson was a political journalist covering the White House during every administration from Harry S. Truman to George W. Bush. Thompson was born and raised in Los Angeles, California, where he lived until the United States entered WWII. He enlisted in the Navy after the attack on Pearl Harbor and served until the war's end before attending Indiana University and receiving a B.A. in journalism. After graduating college in 1949, Thompson worked for two years at the Fort Wayne Gazette. He then joined International News Service (INS) as a reporter covering the Department of Agriculture…

The University Libraries is pleased to announce the major upgrade to the Pool Reports Digital Collection Website!  This new iteration is greatly enhanced with content about the White House Correspondents' Association, Profiles of past and present White House Pool Reporters, Feature stories on a variety of related topics (including bibliographies for further study), News and Press Releases, Resource lists of materials both within the UMD Libraries Collection as well as important material beyond the Libraries' walls, and Digital Tools that are currently being developed for the project.…

Name: Ellie Jornlin Year in school: Freshman Major: Journalism Hometown: Hagerstown, MD Ellie just finished her first year at the University of Maryland.  She is involved in the Terrapin Yearbook and is applying to be a part of the Diamondback. She used her first semester at UMD to get used to life as a college student.  She is looking forward to gettting more involved in extracurricular activities on campus! She was awarded a scholarship to participate in the School of the New York Times Summer Program. She is still figuring my future out. However, she is sure that…

As of May 15, 2023, the Auto-redaction accuracy for Private Identifying Information type, phone number, reached nearly 100%. Using the Insurrection files (2020-11, 2020-12, and 2021-01)  as a sample the auto-redaction script achieved improved accuracy overall. Auto-redaction Accuracy by PII Type Author Phone Number auto-Redacted 97.21% Author Email Address auto-Redacted 90.91% Author Physical Address auto-Redacted 23.03% Overall, accuracy is close to 70%. Although PII Type Physical Address has the lowest accuracy rate, it occurs much less frequently than the other two types. …

Emily Goodin is a reporter based in Arlington, Virginia. Goodin received a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Missouri-Columbia, before beginning her career as a staff writer for The Hotline in 1999, where she would work to become a senior editor. Goodin was then hired by The Hill as an associate editor for campaigns, and later as a features editor. In 2014, Goodin became a Senior Communications Specialist for the Chief Executive Officer of the House of Representatives, where she worked for two years. Prior to Trump’s election, Goodin joined RealClearMedia to work as the…