Emerson Student Journalists Blitz Super Bowl Media Week

Journalist-in-Residence Angela Anderson-Connolly ’90 will spend much of the start of the week leading up to Super Bowl LX as “support staff,” babysitting equipment and saving spots for press conferences.

If that sounds a bit dull, it’s only so that the six student journalists she’s taken with her to Santa Clara, California, can cover Monday’s Super Bowl 2026 Opening Night at full tilt, gathering stories for Emerson’s TV news channel, WEBN, and posting videos and photos of the players, coaches, and fans on social media.

Anderson-Connolly said that in her years of bringing WEBN students to Super Bowl media week, she has figured out how to maneuver her team into the best position to cover the “spectacle.”

“It’s chaos, it’s so loud,” she said. “There’s usually the press conference for the Super Bowl before [Opening Night] in the stadium, so we go to that and we just stay. We’ve managed the last two years to be front and center of [Kansas City Chiefs tight end and Taylor Swift beau] Travis Kelce.”.

Watch: WEBN Sports’ Super Bowl Media Week Coverage

This year, the students will be jockeying to get in front of New England Patriots’ quarterback Drake Maye and coach Mike Vrabel (fine, maybe some Seattle Seahawks, too). Opening Night kicks off a week of nonstop action for the students: press conferences with the teams and the halftime performers; the NFL Honors Show, complete with celebrity-strewn red carpet; media parties; networking opportunities.

In between everything, they’ll be writing and editing stories, posting video on social, and if there’s time, sleeping.

Prepared for Anything

Sports Communication major and WEBN Sports Co-Executive Producer Ally Evans ’27 is one of the students on the trip. She said she’s excited that this year’s matchup includes two young-ish teams with a historical rivalry.

“The Patriots are a very young team between their biggest players—Drake Maye, Will Campbell— so I would love to talk to them about how excited they are for this and what the pressure is for them being in this new environment at such a young age,” Evans said.

Evans and her WEBN Sports Co-Executive Producer Jules Mazzolini ’26 say they’re daunted by the pressure to produce content throughout such a furiously paced week. Between their Sports Communication classes, their work on WEBN, and their recent internships — Evans with the Boston Globe, Mazzolini with WHDH 7News in Boston— both said they felt well prepared to cover a high profile, national event.

“I was in the Bruins’ locker room, the Patriots’ locker room, Celtics practice,” Mazzolini said of her internship. “Being in that environment … I learned how to be a reporter and not necessarily a fan, which is difficult to do when you’re a sports fan, especially in Boston.”

In a field that’s often dominated by men, Emerson’s delegation at the Super Bowl this year happens to be all women. Mazzolini said the crew is tight. 

“We’re all pretty good friends or have been in classes together for years, so it’s exciting [that] now we’re going to Super Bowl [media week] together,” said Jules Mazzolini ’26, WEBN Sports Co-Executive Producer.  “It’s pretty cool to see everyone’s work, over time, pay off.” 

All Access

Emerson is not the only institution to send students to cover Super Bowl media week, Anderson-Connolly said, but the college does have an advantage over the others. 

“There are things that we get to do that other schools don’t get to do because we have alum connections,” she said.

For example, Emerson students will get to connect with Mark Quenzel ’82, executive producer of the NFL Honors show, and former senior vice president and head of content for the NFL, who meets with students, takes them behind the scenes of the Honors, and helps them get red carpet access.

Anderson-Connolly said there are always Emerson alumni who went to Super Bowl week as students and return as journalists covering the events for various outlets.

“The students… make really good connections for future jobs and other [opportunities],” she said. “They trade numbers and get contact information, and they’re really good at networking.”

The Super Bowl trip is just one opportunity for junior and senior Journalism and Communication students to enter the scrum and test their skills. Next month, a group will travel to Austin, Texas to cover various tracks at SXSW.

At the end of March, first-year and sophomore students head to Washington, D.C. for the Cherry Blossom Kite Festival, where they’ll dine at the National Press Club and visit CSPAN or Bloomberg in addition to covering the festival itself. Students have gone to Major League Baseball Spring Training, the Iowa Caucus, and, in years past, the Oscars.

Those types of offerings were what originally struck Evans as “unique to Emerson.”

“A lot of the opportunities that we have, not just in sports, but in politics and entertainment, to go and cover these very high-profile events … is something to acknowledge,” Evans said. “Had I gone to any of the other schools I applied to, I don’t know if I’d be having the opportunity to have this on my reel and on my resume at 20 years old.”