John King, who formerly attended URI, talks about his time at the Cigar, his path to journalism and the challenges young journalists face today. PHOTO CREDIT: CNN
CNN’s Chief National Correspondent and University of Rhode Island alumnus John King has a message for student journalists today: thank you.
“Younger journalists are coming of age in a really complicated time,” King said. “The challenge for a young journalist today is enormous. The need, because of the steepness of that hill, is also enormous. I say thank you, and welcome to the fight and to the business.”
King, a former reporter for the Good Five Cent Cigar during his time at URI, graduated with a bachelor’s in journalism in 1985 and went on to a career in print journalism and television news. An undergraduate internship at the Associated Press led him to a full-time job as a reporter after completing his degree.
After working for the AP for 12 years in Providence, Boston and Washington, D.C., King left the AP to pursue a new career opportunity at CNN. Now, King has been a journalist at CNN for 24 years. Yet, he wasn’t always sure this would be the career he’d choose to pursue.
Upon entering URI, King said he contemplated studying history, studying English, becoming a teacher and going to law school. It wasn’t until his Shakespeare professor suggested he consider taking journalism classes that he fully committed to the major.
“I ended up in journalism almost by accident — I think like many kids who go to a good liberal arts college,” King said. “You show up thinking, you’re 17, 18 years old, and ‘I’m not really exactly sure what I want to do.’ There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. I think there’s everything right with that at that age; to be curious, but not sure.”
King is well known today for his “Magic Wall,” which allows him to show interactive data and maps when he hosts CNN election coverage. During the 2020 presidential election, King’s “Magic Wall” became a viral hit online.
He has been the host of “Inside Politics,” his midday broadcast that has aired on weekdays since 2014. King also hosted the Sunday edition of “Inside Politics” until earlier this year, when it was announced he would hand the show off to his colleague Abby Phillip, a senior political correspondent and anchor at CNN.
Phillip will be the featured speaker at URI’s annual Amanpour Lecture, where she will discuss “Honesty and Authenticity in Political Journalism.” The lecture is hosted annually by the Harrington School of Communication and Media and will be delivered virtually at 5 p.m. on Wednesday.
“It’s great for Abby to do this because it’s so important to URI, and it’s great for URI because Abby is part of that next generation,” King said. “We need more women in important positions; we need more people of color in important positions … She’s fun, and she comes to the job with enormous energy, and she’s just helped us.”
The lecture series is endowed by fellow URI alumna and CNN’s Chief International Anchor Christiane Amanpour. Amanpour and King graduated only two years apart from URI’s journalism program, but it wasn’t until they were both covering the first Persian Gulf War when they met each other for the first time.
“I worked for the Associated Press, I was in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia and Christiane was there for CNN,” King said. “She was across the hall. She was smoking a cigarette— she’s quit— but she was smoking a cigarette in those days, and she had a URI sweatshirt on. And I literally walked over and said, ‘Where the hell did you get that?’ And she said, ‘Well, I went to URI.’ And so that’s how we found out that we were both Rams.”
King was the speaker at the inaugural Spring Taricani Lecture Series on First Amendment Rights last April, where he discussed present-day journalistic issues with the URI community.
Throughout his journalism career, King has won Emmy Awards, George Foster Peabody Awards and received an honorary degree from URI, according to the University’s website. Despite his past accolades, to King, the best part of his job is the continuing education opportunities that come alongside it.
“I consider it a failure if I get on the elevator to leave and go home, and I can’t think of something new that I learned today,” King said. “I get paid now to go to college, as opposed to me paying to go to college. Every day I’m learning, and I think that’s just a gift.”
King emphasized the dramatic shift the journalism industry has seen throughout the pandemic. For both professional journalists and student journalists alike, many have not had the opportunity to meet sources face-to-face amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
He said that while Zoom has been a great alternative and safer choice for interviews during the pandemic, the virtual format doesn’t give reporters enough context and understanding of the source they’re talking with.
“If you just started in the last 18 months, you may never have sat at a table having coffee with an elected official or the president of the University, because it hasn’t been allowed,” King said. “There is nothing like being at the same table with someone … you get a much more fair, contextual view of who they are.”
He hopes that when reporters can fully return to on-the-ground reporting, they utilize and remember the importance of in-person interviews, meetings and “interpersonal” conversations that he has found to be “critical” throughout his time as a journalist.
The Cigar provided King with foundational elements of journalism throughout his time as a contributor, but more so, it taught him the importance of working in a loud environment, finding your creative process and the values of teamwork.
“One of the great gifts of working at the Cigar was to understand a newsroom, and to understand collaboration,” King said. “It teaches you that even the person you didn’t think was going to be your best friend, you have some shared values with.”