Get tips on covering government shutdowns at NPCJI webinar, noon today

Time is running out for congressional Democrats and Republicans to agree to how they will fund the 2024 federal budget. All signs are pointing to a federal shutdown on Oct. 1, the first day of the new fiscal year. 

What do both national and local reporters need to know about what happens next? How should they cover this story and what it means for Americans? What impact will it have on Americans’ day-to-day lives? How is this congressional disagreement different from the debt limit debate which was resolved earlier this year?

Join Shai Akabas, executive director of the economic policy program at the Bipartisan Policy Center, to learn answers to these questions. Registration is open for a National Press Club Journalism Institute webinar on Friday, Sept. 29, at 12 p.m.  

Participants will:

  • Gain confidence in covering the government shutdown 
  • Obtain resources for covering this story from both a national and local perspective
  • Learn what led to this year’s impasse, and how this shutdown would be different
  • Get story ideas to tailor the government shutdown story to a media outlet’s community

Panelists:

  • Shai Akabas, executive director, Bipartisan Policy Center’s economic policy program.He has conducted research on a variety of economic policy issues, including the federal budget, retirement security, and the financing of higher education. Akabas joined the BPC in 2010 and staffed the Domenici-Rivlin Debt Reduction Task Force that year. He also assisted Jerome H. Powell, now Chairman of the Federal Reserve, in his work on the federal debt limit. For the past several years, Akabas has steered BPC’s Commission on Retirement Security and Personal Savings, co-chaired by former Sen. Kent Conrad and the Honorable James B. Lockhart III.
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  • Moderator: Bara Vaida, NPCJI’s director of training and a longtime Washington, D.C.-based reporter.

 

The webinar will be interactive. Please bring your questions.