Careers in journalism don’t follow scripts.

The most alluring and daunting parts of the work? Every day presents new challenges.

Asked to describe some of their most compelling assignments, three award-winning alumni of the National Press Foundation’s Paul Miller Washington Reporting Fellowship outlined confrontations with the unexpected – and lessons learned.

Trump’s campaign rally turned assassination attempt

Few expected that the July 13, 2024, weekend campaign stop in Butler, Pa., would make major news. At best, Benjamin Siegel, ABC News deputy political director, recalled thinking that then-candidate Donald Trump might hint at the selection of a running-mate on the last stop before the looming Republican National Convention.

That all changed when gunfire rang out.

“When the shooting started, I was actually under the bleachers trying to make a phone call … and everybody else was more exposed in the front,” Siegel said.

The first concerns, he said, were for the safety of ABC’s five-person team.

“At the same time, you’re thinking ‘we have a job to do.’ This is why we do what we do,” he said, adding that correspondent Rachel Scott continued reporting throughout. “We’re supposed to tell people what happened here. And then, like everything else: ‘OK, do you have a signal? Do you have WiFi? Is your transmission working?'”

“The rest of the day kind of functioned in those two separate tracks: personal safety, the team safety, how to get us from point A to point B once the FBI came and the Secret Service kind of pushed everybody off this now-active crime scene.”

Immigration policy meets the Kentucky Derby

Sometimes, explaining federal government operations requires some creativity.

Ximena Bustillo, NPR’s correspondent covering immigration policy, found a most unlikely place to tell an important story: the 2025 Kentucky Derby.

“One of my favorite things to do as a policy reporter is … go out of D.C. and cover policy on the ground in ways that are very visual and can be a lot more human-focused on very wonky topics,” Bustillo said.

What followed were a series of reports on the personal challenges faced by top jockeys, many of them drawn to the U.S. from countries in the crosshairs of the administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement campaign.

In the coverage, an immigration attorney outlined the process for obtaining special visas for athletes, and how the stepped-up enforcement effort had left some jockeys’ immigration status in limbo.

“Just being in that space and environment was also a challenge,” Bustillo said, because it was so unlike the traditional backdrops of other labor and immigration-related stories.

“But it made for very amazing audio for the radio side; it made very beautiful visuals and was one of the best projects I’ve worked on for sure.”

Anti-abortion violence and a late-night flight to Paris

It was 2001 and Jerry Zremski was speaking to a class in Washington, D.C., when his then-editor at The Buffalo News called with a startling development: James Kopp, wanted for the sniper-style murder of a New York doctor and abortion provider, had been captured after years on the run.

“My God, where?” Zremski recalled asking. “He says, ‘In a small town outside of Paris; how soon can you get there?'”

“So I was on a flight that night. This was before Google Maps, (and) this small town outside of Paris turned out to be in Brittany, six hours from Paris.”

A train was not an option – the French system was hobbled by a strike, and domestic airlines were booked.

“So, I rented a car and drove all the way to this beautiful medieval village called Dinan … where I arrived just in time for the press conference — in French,” said Zremski, now a lecturer at the University of Maryland’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism and director of the school’s Local News Network.

Luckily, Zremski said he knew enough French to understand and write a news story, spending the next several days reporting a longer narrative on the arrest.

“It was just maybe the most beautiful place I’ve ever been, and this horrible thing culminated there. So yeah, that was the coolest.”