Award-winning journalist Yamiche Alcindor (C’09) is one of the country’s preeminent reporters covering national politics, known for her distinctive voice and unwavering commitment to truth.
Currently the Washington correspondent for NBC News, Alcindor has a broad range of media experience, having worked as the White House correspondent for PBS NewsHour, a national political reporter for The New York Times and a breaking news reporter for USA Today. She moderated the PBS show Washington Week, co-moderated a 2019 Democratic presidential debate and has appeared on numerous other programs, including Morning Joe, Meet the Press and NBC Nightly News.
Alcindor’s reporting has been recognized by a bevy of organizations. She received the Radio Television Digital News Association’s John F. Hogan Distinguished Service Award, the International Women’s Media Foundation’s Gwen Ifill Award and the White House Correspondents’ Association’s Aldo Beckman Award for Overall Excellence in White House Coverage. Alcindor received a Peabody for her work as part of a team covering the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol. She is a member of the National Association of Black Journalists and was named the organization’s 2020 Journalist of the Year.
In May, Alcindor delivered the commencement address for Georgetown University’s College of Arts & Sciences. In anticipation of the presidential election, we sat down with Alcindor to pick her brain on all things politics, media and her memories from the Hilltop.
Yamiche Alcindor (C’09) asks President Trump a question during a coronavirus briefing in March of 2020.
It’s been remarkable to see the shift in how news is gathered from when I became a reporter at 16 years old to now, more than 20 years later. I started my career at The Westside Gazette, an African-American newspaper in South Florida, and learned the basics of journalism from its caring and intelligent staff. I then went on to become an intern at The Miami Herald typing on the earliest iterations of computers in newsrooms, and I started writing stories on my iPhone at The Washington Post as an intern.
The technology has grown leaps and bounds over the last two decades that I’ve been a journalist. It has been exciting to feel like a native of the technologies that are now so central to our work — especially because we have to get information to people where they are, and in this era, that gathering place is often social media and digital platforms.
Still, through all of this evolution, the core of journalism has not changed. Journalism is about holding powerful people accountable, being fast but accurate and getting to the heart of what the American people want to know about their lives, about their government, about how we are all surviving and thriving in this country. And everyday, as I report, I think about this question: What do everyday Americans want to know about the world? I really try to explain to people what the government’s role is in their everyday lives and how policies and plans are going to impact them.
I use my Georgetown degree almost every single day. I am constantly thinking about the way that people, especially in this election year, are voting and viewing politics, which goes hand in hand with Government major. I am constantly writing—whether it’s television scripts or digital articles for NBCNews.com—so my English major skills are critical to doing that well. I also cover a lot of issues related to race and culture so I often think about the books that I read by authors like Toni Morrison and W. E. B. Du Bois. Thus, as an African American studies minor at Georgetown, I use what I learned about how we think and talk about race to really understand the stories I am telling.
Alumnae Yamiche Alcindor (C’09) and Lena Tillett (C’09) as undergraduates.
My favorite memory from Georgetown is meeting my best friend, Lena Tillett (C’09). I remember one of my first nights living in Harbin Hall and staying up late into the night, laughing with Lena and falling in love with the idea that I had met my college best friend.
For me, Georgetown is a home where I met so many of the people who have supported me and who I’ve been able to support throughout my life.
When I delivered the commencement address in 2023, five or six of my best girlfriends came to support me, including Lena. She also went into journalism and is an evening news anchor at WRAL, the NBC News affiliate in Raleigh, North Carolina. So Georgetown gave me this group of women who have powered me through life. Our group chat still sustains me.
When President Biden withdrew from the presidential race in July, he turned what was already feeling like an unprecedented race into a race unlike anything we’ve seen before. Covering Vice President Harris and watching her put together a campaign in a matter of weeks, something that often takes years to do, has been a remarkable reporting opportunity. It’s also particularly meaningful to me because I’ve covered her for nearly a decade and I think I probably understand her and her story better than any candidate I’ve covered. And that’s been a real testament to what it means to stay on a story, to get to know sources and to do the job without knowing where it’s leading you. And NBC News encourages that and gives me the resources to keep reporting so that when something like this happens, we’re always ready.
The other thing that’s really different is how many platforms we’re able to report on. We truly have more ways to reach audiences than ever before. Being a television correspondent at NBC News means packaging stories for Nightly News and Today Show that reach millions of people as well as breaking news in places like our streaming network, NBC News NOW, or in written pieces for NBCNews.com. It’s incredible and I feel honored and blessed to have such reach.
The striking thing about reporting on Harris’s rise to the top of the ticket is how quickly she has managed to unify the various power centers within the Democratic Party behind a single objective and message. She really worked hard to build on the moment and harness the enthusiasm and joy many in the party have been feeling.
Yamiche Alcindor (C’09) interviews Vice President Kamala Harris.
That said, it’s a very close race, and when we talk to voters there are a number of reasons people may still have questions about her. So, her challenge is translating the very real enthusiasm into votes.
The Harris campaign is one that has continued to call itself the underdog, and when you look at the polls, you realize why that is. This is a Democratic Party that really wants to make sure that they’re doing every single thing they can to win and to avoid what happened in 2016 when Hillary Clinton was the nominee.
I also covered Donald Trump for a long time, and over the last two months I have seen him try to get a sense of how to pivot his own campaign. The Trump campaign has been going after Harris’s identity and her stances. The former president is also trying to tie Vice President Harris to President Biden. But, he’s still trying to get his sea legs on how to talk about his new opponent. And, like Harris, his campaign understands that this is going to be a close race. So it’s a fascinating dynamic to cover from all sides.
Writing a book has been one of the most beautiful things that I’ve ever done, because I’m dedicating it to my family and to my ancestors. I’m the child of Haitian immigrants. I grew up with my grandmother and my mother so I met the people who made the decision to leave Haiti to come to the United States so that someone like me could be whatever I wanted to be.
I’m living my wildest dreams in being a journalist for NBC News, but I’m also living my grandmother and my ancestors’ wildest dreams too. It’s been a remarkable experience to be able to put down on paper why I am who I am—and that includes understanding that I am the product of a village of people in my mother and my grandmother, my father, my brother, my husband and now my young son.
All of those people have contributed to the way that I see the world and to the way that I report and how I report from the heart. I’m a reporter who is emotional, who feels the stories that I tell, who wants to go out and tell hard truths about America—who wants to cover politics, but who also cares about civil rights. I wanted to be a journalist since the moment I learned the story of a young boy, Emmett Till, who was murdered in 1955 by a racist group of men in Mississippi while he was on a vacation from his home in Chicago.
Writing the book has also allowed me to reflect on who the 16-year-old version of me wanted to become, and then to see the dreams that I’ve been able to realize. It’s also a very personal story. I’ve been open about the fact that I struggled with fertility and that I went through multiple rounds of IVF to conceive my son, so to be able to also tell people a little bit of the backstory of who I am as a person and the struggles that I’ve had is powerful.
“My message to you today is simple: Cherish your relationships. Let your passions lead you to a life of purpose and service. And, be guided by hope and not fear,” Alcindor said to the assembled graduates.
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