“The only thing that you’ll feel is the rumbling. When they start to go crazy, your desk starts to rumble a little bit, and you’re like ‘Oh, no!’,” Yankel said jokingly.

Yankel said that despite the muted sound, the energy of the crowd still affected his play.

“You get hyped when they get hyped. It’s a huge mood swing. The mood swings with you,” Yankel said.

The crowd was a key experience for the Washington Justice’s inaugural homestand, where one team hosts several others at a venue over the course of a weekend. Teams are featured from locations such as Paris, London, and New York. The idea of the homestand is to help fashion a city-wide identity for each team in their respective home areas.

There were dance contests, giant beach balls, and even a fan who proposed to his girlfriend at the event.

The Justice play , a team shooter game that has six players on each team take advantage of characters with unique abilities to capture objectives in a variety of game modes.

Jack Fagan, a fan who played the beta version of Overwatch before its official release, was struck by the energy in the venue and said it was “insane.”

“It feels as if I’m at a concert, which is just such an amazing thing to think of a bunch of people playing video games can be such a high level of entertainment,” Fagan said.

Pulled from traditional sports, this is the first year that the Overwatch League has used this homestand system. Previous homestands have been hosted in New York City, Dallas, and Philadelphia.

The City-Based Model

Mark Ein, founder and majority owner of the Justice, heavily emphasized how important these homestands were for growing the esport and appealing to both new and old fans, as well as to the OWL in general.

“The reason I was drawn to Overwatch as sort of our first anchor investment in esports is because I believe that the city-based model is the best on-ramp to esports that esports can build because it’s a model that traditional sports fans, not just esports fans, understand. So I can tell people that really are new to esports, ‘Do you want to come watch Washington kick Paris’s butt tonight and cheer for them loudly?’ People get that, no matter what,” Ein said.

On Saturday, the method seemed to show it was working as throngs of fans booed the Paris Eternal and roared as the Justice took the stage among a sophisticated light show, complete with ribbon dancers who twirled in the air, suspended high above the stage.

Ein took his cue from traditional sports and his experience as owner of the Washington Kastles, the World TeamTennis franchise he founded in 2008. He said that traits like crowd enjoyment and sales were measures of success, but he said that he still wanted to have “something for everyone.”

Ein referred to what the best organizations in sports were doing well, along with how he wanted to mimic those strengths.

“They’re just making it a world-class entertainment experience, not just a world-class esports experience, and I think the best sports teams and sports events, that’s what they do. They make it an experience more than just the sporting event itself,” Ein said.

91����ington Justice and the Overwatch League took advantage of the Anthem’s high-tech setup, made for concerts and outfitted with a lot of the technology that made running such a high-intensity esport completely possible.

The Justice went whole hog in projecting that “home game” feeling from crowd contests to local advertisements with players. There was even a “founding father” as OWL caster Brennan Hook took to the stage as “Brenjamin Franklin.”

The “Actual Sports Vibe”

It was the home game spirit that fans identified when they walked into the venue. Garen Anderson says that Overwatch, for him, is a family event—he, his wife and his two children take time to play together at home. He also went with his family to the 2019 OWL Grand Finals in Philadelphia and was impressed by the way the DC event was translated from such a large scale to a small scale.

“The overall experience is, I didn’t think they would be able to take the bigger event where you get 30,000 people showing up and condense it down to six, but they did. Yesterday was amazing,” Anderson said Sunday.

Jon Spivey traveled from Baltimore and participated in one the crowd hype initiatives–he performed the dance of one of the characters in Overwatch, a massive gorilla named Winston, who does the twist.

Spivey says that the experience was a lot of fun, and he’s happy with how far esports, in general, have come. He says he’s used to going to Ravens games and the excitement there and said it was approaching that “actual sports vibe.”

Spivey also noticed that the focus was getting the hype from sporting events, as well as the factor of players being able to interact with their fans.

“That’s what I think has been really cool about these homestands, is the teams will be able to interact more with their fans and that gets the audience into it, which just feels more like an actual sport that way,” Spivey said.

As the fans grow accustomed to the homestand system, so do the players, who now have to travel not just across the United States but also to other countries later in the season, all the while contending with different home-field advantages.

Daniel “Funnyastro” Hathaway has had the experience of the homestand on both ends as a visitor to Washington and a home team in Philadelphia. He plays for the Philadelphia Fusion, who knocked off the previously unbeaten New York Excelsior in a tough match on Saturday.

“The hype when we’re walking out is so important. Before the match, when you get to see the crowd when you’re walking on stage, and there are people cheering for you, it does help, for me at least, but once we get into the game, it isn’t a massive difference,” Hathaway said.

Despite the rush, he still doesn’t think he needed the hype on Saturday, as the match against the then-unbeaten Excelsior was enough for him to get hyped on his own.

“I think I played exactly the same. Maybe when there’s a smaller crowd and we’re playing against a worse team it’ll be different, but I’ll just have to see,” Hathaway said.

The Justice will have four more homestands during the season. The next Justice homestand will be hosted again at The Anthem on Saturday, March 7 and Sunday, March 8.

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Theories that started in fringe online communities have made their way to center-stage in Congress, as the House of Representatives goes into the second week of impeachment hearings. The hearings are part of an inquiry into allegations that U.S. President Donald Trump asked the Ukranian government to investigate the family of political rival and former Vice President Joe Biden.

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle opened the impeachment hearing on Nov. 13 by referencing “CrowdStrike,” the name of a theory that the Ukranian government, not the Russian government as determined by the , meddled in the 2016 U.S. elections using a server owned by the company CrowdStrike. There is for this theory. Meanwhile, Russia’s interference has been by federal investigators and intelligence experts.

CrowdStrike found itself at the center of the impeachment inquiry after the release of a rough transcript of a July phone call between Trump and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine.

During the call — in which Trump allegedly tied U.S. military aid to a request that the Ukranian president investigate the business relationships of Joe Biden’s son Hunter — the U.S. president also mentioned CrowdStrike in passing.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., called the CrowdStrike theory “discredited” in his opening statement on Nov. 13.

The leading Republican on the committee, Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., offered a stark contrast. While he didn’t explicitly mention CrowdStrike, he alluded to it, accusing Democrats of working with Ukraine to influence in the election.

“The Democrats cooperated in Ukrainian election meddling, and they defend Hunter Biden’s securing of a lavishly paid position with a corrupt Ukrainian company all while his father served as vice president,” Nunes said. He did not cite any specific evidence to back up this claim in his statement.

Other popular conspiracies

As Congress heads into the second week of impeachment hearings, CrowdStrike is not the only conspiracy theory that has emerged. Nunes also accused Democrats on the intelligence committee of trying to get nude photos of Donald Trump during his opening statement on Nov. 13. Steve Castor, the intelligence committee Republican counsel, also seemed to give credence to a popular conspiracy theory when he asked whether a key witness, former Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, was aware that evidence used to convict former Trump campaign official Paul Manafort, “may have been doctored.” A popular fringe theory is that the notorious “black ledger” that detailed from former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych to Paul Manafort was forged.

There is no evidence to support either the theory that Democrats or that evidence in Paul Manafort’s trial was .

For a politician, especially one of Trump’s status, touting any sort of conspiracy is unheard of, according to political science experts.

David Barker, a professor of government at American University and Director of the Center of Presidential and Congressional Studies, said he “couldn’t emphasize enough” how unprecedented this behavior is.

“There hasn’t been a really high-profile politician, let alone a president, who would give any credence to any conspiracy theory,” Barker said.

CrowdStrike, however, has garnered the most attention in the news cycle out of any other tale, and it’s also fed by seeming corroboration from elected politicians, such as Nunes and Trump.

Why does CrowdStrike matter?

Trump has promoted many conspiracy theories in the past. Most notably, he was one of the proponents of , the malicious theory that insinuated that Barack Obama wasn’t actually a United States citizen by birth, and therefore ineligible for the role of President. Business Insider published an detailing 24 different conspiracy theories that Trump has pushed over the years, ranging from asbestos to the death of conservative Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia.

Conspiracy theories can serve as a powerful political tool and direct scrutiny towards rival politicians, according to one political scientist who specializes in them.

Joseph Uscinski is a professor of political science at the University of Miami and the author of American Conspiracy Theories with Joseph Parent. Uscinski believes that theories like CrowdStrike are being used to deflect blame, noting that it’s easier to avoid scrutiny when someone else looks guilty.

Uscinski, however, said that the conspiracies wouldn’t have much of an effect on impeachment, as most people are split right down party lines on the issue. He thought they would serve to help rationalize beliefs people already have.

“Most people aren’t paying attention at all, and the ones that are already have their minds made up,” Uscinski said.

Trump’s attractiveness to fringe groups and theories has alarmed experts, and Barker believes that more disturbing ramifications are yet to come. He believes that if Trump is reelected in 2020, assuming he is not impeached, then politicians will do what they do best and mimic the winner’s strategy.

“If somebody wins, then that becomes the new normal, and I think that will become the new normal if Trump wins reelection,” Barker said.

Looking forward, Barker wouldn’t be surprised if someone came forward out of the left and became the next form of Trump, embracing the demagoguery that Trump has embraced. Along with that, his vision is bleak for what comes next.

“There might not be a lot of hope for us to do anything about it. This isn’t strictly about conspiracy theories, but about the public’s trend towards believing what they want regardless of what the facts are,” Barker said.

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Students like Inés de Miranda feel that the buffer, at times, comes at a price. She told 91���� she’d be hesitant to hold even a birthday party for fear of getting “SNAP-ed” as its known among students.

“I’m terrified of having something on my student record and having to pay the University, do community service, for something that is completely within my rights as a resident of DC,” de Miranda said.

SNAP, which stands for the Student Neighborhood Assistance Program, fulfills that buffer role between Georgetown students and law enforcement and serves the Georgetown community surrounding the University area. And yet, according to de Miranda, with SNAP comes the loss of communication between neighbors. 

SNAP markets itself as a tool for the entire community. As a result, the service gets a a certain level of use for issues that aren’t within the purview of the University. The Office of Neighborhood Life at Georgetown University keeps , which allows curious visitors the chance to see what’s gone on throughout the year.

The most recent data is from the Fall 2018 semester. The collection uses the term “contacts” to establish when a SNAP patrol gets involved with something in any circumstance. That fall, there were 260 total contacts with SNAP. Of those encounters, about a third didn’t involve a Georgetown University affiliate in either party.

Of those 260, 78% of those calls were about standard noise, and 7% of those calls were about transient noise. Added together, this shows that the main complaints SNAP deals with were noise issues by a wide margin–about 85% total.

91���� reached out to the Metropolitan Police Department about the Georgetown SNAP program. 

“MPD is constantly working in coordination with Georgetown University Police, and partners with the Georgetown University SNAP program to address off-campus housing concerns when/if they arise,” read the official statement obtained by 91����.

Outside of the University, however, not much is said about SNAP, and even less is negative. Matias Burdman is both a Georgetown student while also being a member of the ANC Commission for 2E. Burdman told 91���� that SNAP was “surprisingly uncontroversial.” He’s heard practically nothing from constituents on the issue. 

Burdman says that the number of calls that aren’t related to students are a sign with how well the system is working.

“It goes to show that a lot of people in the neighborhood in the people see SNAP as their first sort of resource when they have a problem, and I’d say it’s a positive thing,” Burdman said.

Jennifer Romm, who’s lived in the neighborhood since she graduated from Georgetown in 1984, echoes these sentiments. Romm told 91���� that SNAP “wasn’t as effective” before the campus plan came about. Now, she says that neighbors like it, and that it was able to deal with smaller issues before they became “big problems.”

Romm, along with Burdman, also said she’d never heard of people abusing the service. Romm was also pleased with what she called a “culture shift” over the past few years.

“Students are really good neighbors, and I think things are safer,” Romm said.

The post Program Giving Students Alternative to Calling Police Raises Concerns first appeared on 91����.

The fire, at a small apartment building on 1525 Church Street NW, left nine residents displaced. According to the District Fire Department, there was significant damage to the top floor of the apartment building and the roof, as well as substantial water damage to the lower floors.

District Fire dispatched at around 10:30, and reported that the fire was under control within a half hour.

No residents were harmed during the fire, but District Fire confirmed that one firefighter was injured and was transported to a hospital with minor injuries. The circumstances of the injuries are unknown at this time.

One resident described hearing smoke alarms blaring, but chalked it up to someone overcooking something. He heard a loud boom, and then encountered “flames as tall as I was” and proceeded to start banging on the doors of different apartments. The resident said he wasn’t sure who called 911.

He said that he had “no idea” what the first boom was.

The resident felt fortunate, as he told 91���� that there was very little damage to his own apartment, but would likely still have to move due to damage to the building.

After heading outside at the direction of emergency services, he said he heard a second boom. He told 91���� that he was told it was a propane tank that blew up. District Fire confirmed this. 

As the fire spread to the roof, it reached a propane cooking grill, causing it to explode. This was secondary to the original fire. 

District Fire says that the original cause of the fire is still “undetermined.” The Red Cross and other agencies assisted residents after the fire.

The post Fire on Church Street NW Leaves Nine Displaced, One Firefighter Injured first appeared on 91����.

On Friday, that estimate was smashed as more than 2,800 people swept through the private school campus in the heart of Georgetown to shop and show their support.

Smith, who is the advancement events coordinator for the school and works on these fundraisers, said that they stopped counting after that milestone was reached on Friday and didn’t even bother to count on Saturday. This leaves the real number at a higher estimate and potentially over 3,000 people.

“The whole event ran pretty smoothly,” Smith said.

“Smoothly” is one way to put it–the fundraiser featured over 75 different vendors, food trucks, and fresh food options. It also featured a raffle for a brand new 2019 Honda CR-V EX-L from Sheehy Honda in Alexandria, Virginia. 

Limited raffle tickets went for $100 each, and Smith told 91���� that 550 tickets were sold—$55,000 worth, every penny of which goes directly to the school.

And that’s only the raffle.

Of those vendors, about 15 were students, who flexed their entrepreneurial muscles in businesses such as photography, art, and slime sales.

Gabriella Lozano is a freshman at Georgetown Visitation and has been making slime for about two and a half years. She said that she was always interested in making her own money, and the stars lined up well with the event.

“So, it was like perfect timing actually, because I was always interested in making my own money, because I felt like I wanted to do that, so I felt like this was a perfect opportunity for me to make money out of something I like doing,” Lozano said.

Maeve Hamilton is a sophomore and started her photography business three years ago. Hamilton also grew up in Georgetown and feels a strong connection to the neighborhood.

“I think Georgetown is beautiful, and I love walking around Georgetown, and I love how like, there’s so many different types of people here, and you can walk into one neighborhood and it’s totally different from two streets down,” Hamilton said.

Hamilton said that the school makes it easy for students to pursue opportunities, and not just limited to business.

“They really encourage us to pursue our extracurriculars, and they have opportunity for us to be student vendors, they send us emails like ‘if you want to do this, let us know, and we can help you work it out,” Hamilton continued.

The staff are also supportive of student ventures into business. Caroline Handorf, the communications director for the school, said that it was “wonderful” for the students to show what they can do, especially in such a public platform.

“It’s spectacular that this offers them a chance to be more visible in our community and in the broader community,” Handorf said

Another important goal of the school was to keep tuition “as low as possible.”

The money from Esprit will go right to the school’s annual fund, and it also comes on the heels of a successful , in which the school sought to undergo large-scale renovations and construction, including resurfacing a field for turf and growing their endowment. 

Per the , the campaign grew the endowment by about $7 million.

The post Student businesses help Georgetown private school raise funds first appeared on 91����.

Tens of thousands of people congregated on Constitution Avenue Saturday to celebrate both the heart-stopping victory and triumphant return of the Washington Nationals—and District Transportation Services held their own against the tide of pedestrians who crammed the Metro and flooded the streets.

The 2019 World Series Champions  paraded before throngs of exuberant fans that culminated in a rally that captured the view of the Capitol building in the background. Massive jumbotrons were posted all along the street in anticipation of the massive crowd which would allow people who weren’t close to the stage to see what was happening.

In anticipation of this, the District Department of Transportation and Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, or DDOT and WMATA, had to move quickly. With the Nationals winning the World Series on a Wednesday and the turnaround for a parade to be scheduled that Saturday, those three days were crucial for ensuring the parade’s success, and they rolled out several plans to help deal with the strain the large crowd would put on city transportation services.

On Friday, Mayor Bowser held a with many of the officials that would be in charge of planning the parade and spoke about several services and information keys that would be set up for the parade. A and a texting service were used to send out key information about the parade, transit, and weather.

DDOT Director Jeff Marootian, told reporters the creation of a  “pedestrian-only zone” was going to be key for safety processes. Cars, scooters, and bikes weren’t allowed within the zone. For people who used them, bike corrals were established all around the zone, and areas used for picking up and dropping off people who used services such as Uber and Lyft were also established along Independence Avenue SW.

All around and along the parade route, roads were closed, which encouraged people to take the MetroIn order to compensate, the Metro ran an all-day rush hour schedule Saturday and pushed any already scheduled work on the track back.

This isn’t the District’s first time around with a victory parade, either. Last June, the Washington Capitals had their own celebration after winning their first Stanley Cup championship in franchise history. The day after, that after final ridership estimates, over 840,000 people rode the Metro.

While the ridership at the Nationals victory parade wasn’t as high, the effects of the large crowd still did cause some strain during the festivities. An alert sent out through the text service, set up by the Mayor’s office, alerted users to a station closure.

“ALERT DC: WMATA advises Archives Station entrance remains closed due to overcrowding,” read the message a little bit before 3 PM, an hour after the parade started. 91���� a half hour later, another alert was sent out saying that the station was now open for “exit only.”

Archives Metro: Due to parade crowds, the station is currently in “exit only” configuration. Use Gallery Place or L’Enfant Plaza instead.

— Metro (@wmata)

Eventgoers, while acknowledging that the experience of riding the cramped Metro was unpleasant, still understood the challenge that came with planning for it. 

Oliver Massa, who rode the Metro during rush hour to get to the parade, said that the experience “sucked,” but still recognized the difficulty and praised them for their efforts.

“I think they did as good as they could,” Massa said.

People replied to the revealing ridership and some praised the Metro for its service throughout the day.

What a turnout for the ! Yesterday's preliminary Metrorail ridership is 504,172 trips. For comparison, last Saturday was 167K lower (337K total), so parade/rally increased ridership by 50%. Extra trains sponsored by made it possible!

— Metro (@wmata)

“You took a lotta crap from the ridership metro, but you excelled like the @Nationals this October. #FIGHTFINISHED” wrote one user.

“

The post With the Nationals victory parade, District transportation weathered another pedestrian storm first appeared on 91����.

“I feel betrayed by the DC administration,” he said.

On Monday, a council chamber was packed to the brim with over 100 people scheduled to testify in the latest development of the continuing months-long battle over access to Jelleff Field. 

Representatives from Maret School, a private school that currently to the field as the result of a contract establishing a public-private partnership between the school and the DC Department of Parks and Recreation, argued in favor of keeping the current agreement and honoring the already signed contract extension. An informal attendance call during the meeting showed that the vast majority of people in attendance were siding with Maret.

The original deal was reached out of necessity when the DPR approached Maret School with the intention of forging a partnership in order to renovate the premises during the depths of the financial crisis of the late 2000’s. Maret School spent $2.4 million to rebuild the pool on premises and renovate the field in 2010.

Representatives from Hardy Middle School and other public schools, however, were incensed at what they saw to be a private school apparently buying the exclusive use of public property at the expense of public school children. They were also angry with what they saw to be a lack of transparency with the DPR throughout the entire process.

The renewed extension would allow Maret to keep the deal for the next nine years. Maret will additionally spend $950,000 to re-up the turf field and fencing.

Many Maret witnesses spoke to the character of the school and condemned people who witnesses believed were stoking conflicts of class and race in order to get what they wanted. Sylvia White, whose son attends Maret and plays soccer and baseball, was upset by unfair characterizations of the school.

“Being a native Washingtonian, which is what I am, I see Maret as just a wonderful melting pot, and so it really bothered me when I would hear folks for political gain, using, you know, class and race and as one of those emotional levers in order to get people to pay attention to the issue when it’s not about that, because our school is as diverse as most of the schools in the same geographic area.”

Shoshana Rosenbaum was scheduled to testify, but didn’t testify due to the pace of the hearing. She has children that have attended Hardy Middle School and believes that the field should be shared equitably.

“Again, lots of witnesses talked about the great thing Maret does for the community. That’s great. But, fundamentally, does it make sense for a public field for a private school to buy access, essentially, to a public space in the most priority hours? I fundamentally don’t think that makes sense, and I think it’s DPR’s responsibility to distribute the hours and frankly give priority to public school students,” Rosenbaum said.

Among those that testified were students. Katrina Tracy described in her testimony how excited people at her school would get when they were able to use Jelleff Field and the disparity between the schools and what they could afford.

“In the end, Maret has a field. Hardy does not. Maret has the means to get a second field. Hardy does not,” Tracy said during her testimony.

Among the people who feel stonewalled by the DPR is Kishan Putta, who is on the Advisory Neighborhood Commission Board for 2E. The ANC 2E board passed three unanimous resolutions going against the deal.

“They kept saying ‘we’re listening, we’re listening,’ but then it’s like hearing, but not listening. They did not process it, they did not care to do anything about it, and then when they sat us down to give us a decision, we asked them ‘why are you doing this?’ and they said ‘we’re doing this because we believe that this is in the best interest of the people of the District of Columbia,’” Putta said.

Susan Epps, the Assistant Head of the Maret School, believes that the process by which DPR awarded the contract was “equitable and fair,” and criticized opposition members harshly for their use of “misinformation” and for a circulating with #MakeJelleffPublic which refers to the contract as a “backroom deal.” Epps called the petition a “very negative campaign” and “grossly inaccurate.”

As of now, the petition has garnered over 2,700 signatures.

The post “Backroom deal” on Jelleff Field access creates controversy first appeared on 91����.

These free rides were courtesy of a price reduction in February. That all came to an end last Tuesday when fares jumped back up to a dollar a ride.

“I would say that knowing I had a way to get across town that was completely free made me more inclined to jumping on the bus as opposed to thinking ‘oh, I have to pay a dollar, to pay two dollars to get somewhere,’” Lucy said. She also said that the price reduction “of course” helped her.

District Mayor Muriel Bowser removed the fares from Circulator buses as a part of her Fair Shot February campaign. Circulator lines spread not just through Georgetown, but also places like the National Mall, Dupont Circle and Union Station.

The efforts to save the free Circulator rides culminated in the city council’s transportation committee holding a hearing over an extension and voting on put forward by Ward 4’s Brandon Todd. Bowser supported the legislation.

“It is true: for some, the $1 fare is nominal; for many others, though—especially for our most vulnerable neighbors—it is prohibitive,” said Bowser in , urging the council to take up Todd’s bill.

The committee, led by Councilwoman Mary Cheh of Ward 3, nixed the bill and the deadline passed with no resolution put forward.

Advocates also echo how costly transportation can be for commuters. Cheryl Cort, the policy director at the , told 91����  transportation is the second largest cost for families besides housing.

Cort said that the circulators are meant for one specific purpose–to run buses every 10 minutes between “centers of activity” and that the city shouldn’t take all of the bus systems and replace them with circulators. 

Instead, Cort says that a better way to combat the problem would be to introduce a new program similar to for low-income transit riders, whom she says make up a majority of the transit-taking population.

“There’s no reason why the city couldn’t provide a different kind of fare program,” Cort said. 

Cort also pointed to the recommendations of the , which also pointed to a program for low-income riders.

Nicole Sheynin is a senior at Georgetown University and lives off-campus at an apartment in Burleith, where the circulator was a far more attractive option for transportation. Now, though, she takes cost into account.

“It’s not like it makes a huge dent, but definitely when it was free, I was like ‘oh, why not take this’ and not use a different method. Now I’d be more likely to walk or take another bus,” Sheynin said.

One criticism of the Circulator fare removal was that Circulator traveled through predominantly wealthy neighborhoods, such as Georgetown, which also sees a high rate of tourism, particularly because of the commercial appeal of shopping and the harbor.

“It’s weird because as a student, I don’t feel like I fit into the traditional ‘wealthy Georgetown resident’ demographic,” Sheynin said laughing. “I fit into the ‘broke college student demographic’.”

At the end of the day, Sheynin said that the free rides were a nice step.

“I know some other cities that do some kind of method of free public transportation. It just feels like you’re taken care of by the city in that sense,” Sheynin said.

The post Free Circulator bus rides? Not anymore. first appeared on 91����.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., ignited a media firestorm on Sept. 24 when she launched inquiry of Trump’s actions. A rough transcript of a phone call released Sept. 24 showed Trump asking Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate his political rivals.

The impeachment proceedings have dominated the news cycle of organizations such as CNN, Fox News, 91����ington Post, and the New York Times. CNN has a dedicated to impeachment news and columns. does as well.

News outlets can, and should, focus on the impeachment proceedings as much as possible, experts say.

‘Barrage of misinformation’

Margaret Sullivan, media columnist for 91����ington Post, said in an interview with 91���� that it is important for journalists to fight against  “a barrage of misinformation.” Reporters, she said in a phone interview, need to be “very, very well prepared.”

In a , Sullivan discussed how Trump, whom she refers to in the article as “the TV president,” has so far failed to spin coverage of the impeachment to his advantage.

“It’s about to get worse: Impeachment hearings are sure to flood the media zone with images and words that cannot make the president look good, despite the best efforts of his loyal defenders,” Sullivan wrote in the column.

A released by CNN on Sept. 30 showed that 47% of Americans are now in favor of impeachment proceedings, up from 41% in May.

Sullivan also said she believes that it’s important for journalists to push back on the spread of misinformation in their networks.

She pointed to instances such as CNN anchor Jake Tapper’s interview with Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and 60 Minutes anchor Scott Pelley’s interview with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif. In both interviews, the anchors challenged pushed back at their guests. Sullivan said pushing back against anything that would “muddy the waters” is critical to coverage.

Fernando Pizarro, the Washington correspondent for Univision who also teaches as an adjunct professor at American University’s School of Communication, said this coverage is different from the Bill Clinton impeachment scandal in 1998-1999.

“Things are going very fast. We’re talking about something a lot different from 1999,” Pizarro said, referencing coverage of the impeachment of former president Clinton, which Pizarro covered for CNN Español.

Pizzaro associates the speed of news to the beginning of social media.

Viewer burnout?

Pizarro disagrees, however, with the concept of wall-to-wall coverage, saying that networks are now banking on their viewers being glued to politics. He fears there could be news fatigue, which happens when viewers burn out on a particular issue.

“Twenty-four-hour news networks, particularly at least one, spend too much time on politics,” Pizarro said.

Still, Pizarro pointed to events involving the Trump Administration — such as cabinet resignations and former Special Counsel for the Department of Justice Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election — that helped prime the media for this kind of reporting.

“I think the media is pretty well trained to tackle impeachment at this moment,” Pizarro said.

Alicia Shepard, former NPR ombudsman, said accuracy is key in the fast-moving coverage. In 2006, Shepard wrote a book about journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s coverage of the 1972 Watergate scandal.

Shepard said that news organizations should avoid focusing only on polling — a mistake made during the 2016 elections coverage.

“Polls are a snapshot in time. They are often, and can be, wrong,” Shepard said.

She said journalists “cannot afford” to make mistakes in their reporting. “There is a need to be first,” Shepard said. “No one remembers who was first, they just remember who was wrong.

“The Trump Administration is, and rightfully so, going to be very good at capitalizing on those mistakes,” Shepard added. “All media can do is to be careful to be absolutely sure about the facts that they have and not be invested in the outcome.”

Photo by Kristen Johnson

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Erich Roney runs three vape shops in the D.C. Metro Area, but the fear building around e-cigarettes is making business tough.

Roney is the district manager of VaporFi, a group of vape shops that also carry CBD oil with a location in the Georgetown neighborhood. Roney told 91���� that recent news about vaping-related illnesses and deaths have hurt business, and the fear surrounding the news of sickness and potential regulation has “absolutely” hurt sales.

“I have a lot of customers that are concerned. You’ve got a lot of people stating how they don’t know what they’re going to do because this is the only thing that’s helped them quit smoking. So if they don’t have the flavors, they don’t really know what their options are,” Roney said.

He said that people are calling with questions and stockpiling liquids, unsure if they’re ever going to be able to get them again.

According to the , or the CDC, at least seven people have had deaths related to vaping, and hundreds more have been hospitalized and injured. While no major agencies, including the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), have established a clear link between vaping and these health issues both urged caution.

Roney said that he hasn’t seen anyone with any serious health effects in his store from vaping. The most he said he’s seen is irritation caused by someone drawing vapor in a way that isn’t consistent with the vape’s design.

Maura Byrne is a student who uses Juuls. She’s not too worried about the scenario and thinks that people are ignoring the real culprit and instead focusing on the hysteria surrounding vaping itself.

“If you do a lot of deeper research, it’s mostly a lot of black market THC carts, and I don’t use those, so I’m not worried,” Byrne said.

The Trump administration has been floating the idea of banning flavored e-cigarettes. Proponents of the ban say that this would shut down a market that disproportionately targets younger demographics, such as college and high school students. 

Elizabeth McDermott is the nurse at Georgetown Day School. While she said vaping and e-cigarette use isn’t an issue at the middle school, the school faces problems on their high school campus.

“I don’t think they should be sold,” McDermott said.

McDermott highlighted the fact that the products often mimic general household supplies, such as flash drives or inhalers, thereby allowing students the potential to bring them into schools. 

She also pointed to the plethora of flavors available. Along with the way that the vapes and e-cigarettes are packaged and designed, they can include things such as superheroes, which target younger demographics. Additionally, she said that since they don’t smell, they’re easier for avoiding detection from parents with covert usage.

Critics of further vaping restrictions, such as Roney, argue that the negative press surrounding vaping is a result of mixed messaging and that fears are overblown and misdirected. Roney told 91���� the latest talk of vaping regulation is a “knee-jerk reaction.”

“The general public has some idea that we offer flavors to entice kids, which is a crazy assumption to me because you can do a Google search for alcohol. There’s doughnut flavored alcohol, there’s cotton candy, sherpert, all these types of alcohols are flavored in cotton candy kind of ways. We offer the same flavors that they would, it’s no different,” Roney said.

Roney emphasized that alcohol is marketed as an adult beverage, while he markets vaping as an adult tool to get off nicotine and tobacco.

He said that most of his customers are former smokers and he very rarely has customers that want to start vaping because they think it’s “cool.” 

Despite the anecdotal evidence, whether or not e-cigarettes help people quit smoking traditional tobacco products isn’t definite. 

“E-cigarettes containing nicotine have the potential to help some individual adult smokers reduce their use of and transition away from cigarettes. However, e-cigarettes are not currently approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as a quit smoking aid, and the available science is inconclusive on whether e-cigarettes are effective for quitting smoking,” said the CDC in a August 30th.

Roney said that the regulation isn’t new and that regulation by the FDA has existed since 2016. The was a blanket regulation that covered all tobacco products.

He said the liquids that he sells at his shop are trackable, right down to the lab and the shipment. He said that the issue should be likened to that of a bad batch of food, such as with bad batches of tuna or lettuce, where that particular brand had that single batch pulled.

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