Investigating the Trump Assassination Attempt Won Irina Bucur ’21 a Journalism Prize
Irina Bucur ’21 poses for a portrait at Mellon Park in Pittsburgh. (Mick Stinelli)
It was at the Communiqué, Chatham’s student-run news outlet, where Irina Bucur ’21 first realized she wanted to be a journalist.
There, she worked alongside other undergraduate students who were as passionate as she was about journalism. She learned what made a story a story. “We were all pushed to take ourselves seriously, to use our observations, to take campus and campus life seriously,” Bucur said.
Thus began a journey that took her straight to the front lines of history. Last year, Bucur was reporting on a Donald Trump campaign rally for the Butler Eagle when shots rang out. Trump was grazed; one attendee was killed.
Bucur was there when the assassination attempt happened, and she and her colleagues stayed on the story while the national press pool continued on the campaign trail. “We were there before, and we were there afterwards,” she said.
In May, Bucur was part of a team of journalists who won the Golden Quill Award from the Press Club of Western Pennsylvania for their investigation into the security failures that preceded the shooting.
She interviewed law enforcement personnel, local politicians, attendees at the rally, and more about the shockwaves that ran through the whole county. “I think that was something that local news was able to do so effectively, because we could see how that lack of security impacted our community, impacted the perception of our community,” she said. “We knew who to talk to.”
She connected the experience to what she learned at Chatham in a course taught by Sara Bauknecht, an assistant professor of communications. “We were always talking about local journalism … and then, all of a sudden, I was faced with a real-life situation like that,” Bucur said. “But the circumstances around it, I could not have expected.”
Bauknecht was just one of a few faculty members who got Bucur on the path to journalism. Katie Cruger, Kristen Lauth Shaeffer, and Prajna Paramita Parasher were a few others.
Through conversations with her professors, Bucur got to enjoy one of the great benefits of a small school like Chatham: personal connections to the faculty.
“Even if it was just a paper, all the feedback I got [at Chatham] was really personalized. I learned so much.”
And whether she was studying journalism, psychology, or art, all the courses Bucur took had a role in shaping her.
“I’ve been reflecting on the liberal arts focus at Chatham and why it’s meant so much to me,” she said. “In a nutshell: all the courses that I continue to refer to either in a personal or professional capacity were foundational in building a sense of cultural literacy.”
There was also, of course, the Communiqué, where, Bucur said, she made her first strides in investigative journalism with an article about internships. “That experience was very eye opening, because I realized what I am experiencing, what I am seeing on campus, is important,” she said.
As a student reporter, she at first had a clear expectation of how the article would turn out—but she was humbled when her research and reporting showed a more complex story than she first envisioned. “People surprise you, the facts surprise you, and the story speaks for itself,” she said of the process.
Bucur wears her graduation garb for a photo outside the Jennie King Mellon Library.
After graduating, Bucur spent time in Romania, where she was born. She applied for jobs at human rights organizations, newsrooms, and watchdog groups—anything that would allow her to work with journalists or as a journalist.
When she began looking into rural journalism in the U.S., she set her sights on Alaska, Wyoming, and, eventually, less than 50 miles away from Pittsburgh in Butler County, where she saw an opening at the Eagle, the local newspaper.
She began as a general assignment reporter, covering a little bit of everything: municipal meetings, school boards, car crashes, fires, crimes, and more. Then, she began covering education and doing features stories. As a reporter at a small, local paper, there were always multiple beats that needed to be covered.
“No day as a journalist is the same,” she said. Even on the education beat, she found herself immersed in related topics like state funding and mental healthcare. “Every day brought so much opportunity to just learn and talk to experts.”
Bucur also did stories about the opioid crisis, speaking to people who’d had substance use disorder, were incarcerated, and were spending time in a recovery house. “I tried to just focus on the individual stories for that piece,” she said. “I didn’t want the stories to just blend together and be something that could’ve just happened anyplace.”
She left the Butler Eagle in October of 2024. Since then, she’s been working in marketing as the public relations director for Salt Marketing. She focuses on a mix of copywriting, content writing and outreach for nonprofits.
“I'm enjoying the learning curve of that and hope to get back into journalism in a different capacity—maybe freelance or something else,” she said.
Learn more about the communications program at Chatham University, where students can focus on journalism, public relations, graphic design, and human communication, at chatham.edu.