Any publishing project is a challenge because it involves negotiations among competing forces. Graphic designers want more graphics. Writers want more words. Photographers want more and bigger pictures. Editors want everything to be shorter. Deadlines loom, nerves fray and friendships fracture, if only for a time.

Not this time. The Roosevelt students who worked on Primary Rhythms rose to an array of challenges in reporting, designing and editing their book. What was most remarkable about the class was its diversity. At some points, it seemed as though a United Nations team had moved in.

By race, by age, by national origin, the class looked a lot like the America it was examining as it pursued the primary contest as it shifted from Iowa to New Hampshire to South Carolina and then to Illinois for the Feb. 5 event. From its first heated podcast to the final hours of the final day, when the students focused on headlines and story placement, it clicked and hummed like a team that had worked together for years.

Charles Madigan, Presidential Writer in Residence, Roosevelt University, College of Arts and Sciences