Dana Alkhouri
By Zoë Eitel
Multiple internships, a paralegal certification and a Double Demon education have led Dana Alkhouri to a career where she is able to combine her skills in research, her dedication to hard work and her passions for news and journalism.
Dana works at ABC News in New York as an Anchor and Production Associate/Assistant for World News Tonight with David Muir where she conducts research, reaches out to sources and does additional editing and cutting. Because the show is live and covers breaking news, Dana and the rest of the team have to be ready to make changes to the scripts at a moment’s notice and be careful to avoid mistakes, which she says is scary but cool.
Anchor and Production Associate/Assistant
at ABC News World News Tonight with David Muir
BA Political Science and International Communication 2018
MA Public Policy with Journalism Independent Study 2019
“When the show is live at 6:30, I’m on set standing right next to the writer, helping pass along scripts to David Muir just in case anything changes in the line up,” Dana says. “Everything fluctuates in a way, so if there’s a breaking story and it hits at 7, we’re going to run through and do a whole new show because we need to cover it.”
Dana was attracted to the news industry because she saw it as a good way to combine her undergraduate degree in political science and international communication with her master’s in public policy with an independent study in journalism. She also held multiple news-related internships while she was attending DePaul and says she has those to thank for pushing her to continue in the industry.
Internships at NBC Chicago and ABC Chicago led Dana to a fellowship at Bustle in New York. When interviewing for that fellowship, Dana was told that her supervisor was attracted to her resume because of her background in news and the supervisor saw that as unique.
“I became a Double Demon because of how great DePaul was to me.”
While at Bustle, Dana not only got experience in a digital media group, but she also received an unexpected call that would lead to her next opportunity.
“When I was in New York, I got a call from someone at Disney, and they were like, ‘We know you’re coming back to finish your master’s, do you want to come back and work at ABC in Chicago?’” Dana says. “It was very unheard of for an intern to get called back, and I did that internship for a whole year until I graduated and came back to New York and got this job with World News Tonight.”
Dana credits her references and recommendations for helping her land the opportunities she’s had, but acknowledges that it was also up to her to take advantage of the networks and connections she was making.
“People can open doors for you, but it’s on you to keep those doors open,” she says. “Someone could put your name out there, but you have to make your name stand for something.”
When Dana became a Double Demon, she decided to add an independent study in journalism on top of her graduate degree. Though it took a lot of work to get it approved and completed, she learned a lot that has helped her in her career so far.
“It was really teaching me the mechanics to then eventually go into what I’m doing now and teaching me what it takes because script writing is not just writing an essay, it’s a completely different type of style,” Dana says. “You have to fit so much information into one sentence. That’s a skill.”
