NBC News has announced its class of nine journalists who will be deployed to cover the 2024 presidential candidates and battleground states. These journalists, known as embeds, will be the eyes and ears on the ground for NBCU news platforms, tracking every movement of campaigns as the race unfolds. From research to shooting b-roll and live events, filing digital stories, and doing on-air reporting, this cycle’s class of embeds is ready to take on the challenge.
The class includes a diverse group of talented individuals, such as Emma Barnett, Sarah Dean, Nnamdi Egwuonwu, Jillian Frankel, Alec Hernandez, Greg Hyatt, Katherine Koretski, Alex Tabet, and Jake Traylor. They will contribute to NBC, MSNBC, CNBC, Telemundo Noticias, NBC News Now, and NBCNews.com and MSNBC.com.
Carrie Budoff Brown, who oversees the embed program, said that the embeds “are supplementing a deployment of correspondents in the field.” Embed assignments are still being determined and finalized, with an eye toward being flexible as campaigns and circumstances shift.
The embeds go through a month-long training program on writing, camera work, digital reporting, and hair and makeup, among other production details. They also meet with network anchors, executives, and show lead producers.
Budoff Brown was an embed for Politico during the 2008 cycle, covering Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. She said that the experience “is a grind and it is challenging, but these are coveted positions.” The embeds are prepared for “a reality of covering politics these days, for better or worse”: attacks on the media.
There has been enough curiosity about the lives of embeds to inspire a 2017 series, Embeds, which aired on Complex Networks, co-created by two former embeds, Scott Conroy and Peter Hamby. At NBC News, past embeds have gone on to other high-profile roles, including Garrett Haake, Vaughn Hillyard, Monica Alba, and Mike Memoli.
Shaq Brewster, who was an embed in the 2016 cycle, gave up his apartment to go on the road, sleeping in a friend’s house or guest rooms or making quick stops at home when he had time off. He admitted there is a certain monotony to listening to a candidate’s same speech perhaps multiple times per day, but the campaign storylines continue to change, and the embeds also are working for different platforms at the network with a variety of different reporting projects.
Brewster’s advice to embeds? Drink water and stay hydrated, and “There are things that people can predict. There are things that people expect. But it is your job to be out there and cover what happens.”
