Prospect High School graduate Ryan Kupperman interviews pro-Palestinian protesters Monday in Chicago’s Union Park for his university’s Elon News Network.
Courtesy of Ryan Kupperman
Prospect High School graduate Ryan Kupperman isn’t just any young journalist covering the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
He is following in the footsteps of his grandfather, Harvey Wittenberg, who covered the infamous 1968 DNC in Chicago for WLS radio.
Kupperman, a journalism student at Elon University in North Carolina, is managing editor of the student-run Elon News Network. The 22-year-old rising senior said a freshman class in journalistic writing spawned his interest in news.
“I was thinking it would be some sort of journaling class,” he said. “It turned out to be the school newspaper class.”
It was perfect for someone who describes himself as “a big storyteller.”
Prospect High School graduate Ryan Kupperman interviewing pro-Palestinian protesters for Elon News Network in Chicago’s Union Park Monday during the Democratic National Convention.
Courtesy of Ryan Kupperman
“Especially with events like (the convention), I like to be present for history and be able to retell what’s happening,” said Kupperman, who calls himself “a history nerd.”
He was unaware that his grandfather had covered the 1968 convention until Wittenberg texted him the night before he left for Chicago.
“He just said, ‘Yeah, I actually covered the 1968 one myself. We’ll talk about it sometime.’ I said, ‘OK, we’ll compare notes.’”
Harvey Wittenberg
Wittenberg started at WLS in the news department then moved to more of a management role. But because of his news background, he was asked to cover the ‘68 convention for what was at the time a Top 40 music station.
“We were on the convention floor when the rioting broke out in downtown Chicago,” he said.
He did interviews, mainly with members of the Illinois delegation, on the convention floor at the International Amphitheatre on the South Side, feeding his reports by phone to the station.
One of them was with Senate Minority Leader Everett Dirksen of Pekin.
“He was a master politician. He spoke very slowly and very cautiously,” he said.
Kupperman hit the ground running this week, heading to McCormick Place to get a sense of the delegates, then to Union Park to cover pro-Palestinian protests and finally the United Center, for the convention programming.
While his grandfather phoned in his reports, Kupperman and his two colleagues are taking photos, shooting video and writing web content.
“Man what an opportunity,” he said.
“I’m fond of the amount of energy they’re putting into appealing to the younger generation,” Kupperman added. “I think that’s also what we are trying to focus our reporting on the most, because our audience is college students.”
As for the protests at Union Park, Kupperman described the atmosphere as “hopeful and determined.”
“When you have a park of tens of thousands of people who are all moving in unison, it’s a powerful thing,” he said.
Wittenberg, a Lincolnwood resident best known for his long association with the Chicago Blackhawks — including his many years as the public address announcer at home games — said he admires his grandson’s fledgling career.
“He has won all kinds of national awards and he was the top journalism senior when he graduated high school,” he said. “I’m very proud of him.”