Photo courtesy of CBS News/Bo Erickson Pictured is a live shot on Bo Erickson in Las Vegas, Nevada, in February reporting on Democratic debate night.

For Marshall native and current CBS News campaign reporter Bo Erickson, a career in journalism was never really in doubt. In fact, it was more of a natural calling.

Beginning as a middle school cub reporter for the Weekly Reader magazine, Erickson has always had a keen interest in getting to the bottom of every story. Little did he know that skill set would take him to the top of his profession, where he now covers the Joe Biden campaign for CBS News.

On trips back to Marshall, Erickson still gets a kick out of seeing the old article written about him as an aspiring reporter while attending Holy Redeemer School, and reminiscing about the journey that has brought him to the nation’s capital.

“The Marshall Independent did a story on that back in the day, which was very funny because I saw that little article when I went home,” said Erickson. “It’s nice to know that I wanted to do that when I was in sixth grade and I’m doing it now. So, there’s a nice kind of linear progression there.”

Erickson continued to sharpen his journalism skills while attending Marshall High School from 2009-2013. Under head coach Rick Purrington, Erickson was a three-time state qualifier for the Marshall Speech Team. Erickson credits Purrington as a major influence on him in his growth as a journalist.

“He really encouraged people to think critically, think differently and defend your argument,” said Erickson. “Those were skills that I really like the mental exercise of going through.”

Post graduation, Erickson traveled to Washington D.C. to study at George Washington University where he obtained a degree in journalism/mass communications and Arabic. He later served as an intern at major television and radio news outlets like NBC News and NPR before moving on to CBS News, where he currently works as a Biden campaign reporter for the 2020 Presidential Election.

In covering presidential hopeful Biden, Erickson has been a fixture on the campaign trail that began with his very first event in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In the year and a half since, Erickson’s campaign coverage has taken on a completely different look in the midst of the pandemic. Erickson has even described it as two completely different campaigns beginning with a frantic, mile a minute pace to start.

“It was just like running and gunning for almost a year and that was kind of the experience that I thought I was going to have,” said Erickson. “You wake up in a different town everyday and you go to these smaller events (that) increasingly grow in size throughout the primary.”

While traveling to various towns and events throughout the country, Erickson has come to particularly enjoy visiting cities that have the look and feel of his hometown.

“I think the most rewarding experience is seeing pockets of the country that I never thought that I would even have the opportunity to see,” said Erickson. “It’s fun going to these big cities, but I enjoy seeing these Marshall (type) communities in every other state. I just loved seeing how the community comes together.”

Interactions with community members through “Man on the Street” interviews has also been one of the most enjoyable aspects of seeing new parts of the country.

“We’d show up and walk into these small diners and coffee shops and meet kind of those sporadic customers that we’d just be running into and hearing what’s on their mind,” said Erickson. “It’s just so valuable to hear right from people and not having to call them or email them, they’re just right there.”

The face to face interactions with community members, in addition to other common campaign coverage tools went to the wayside for campaign reporters nationwide when the Covid-19 pandemic took root in March. According to Erickson, the experience that he’d grown accustomed to shifted dramatically.

“How I described it is everything came to a screeching halt. This is a different experience,” said Erickson. “I kind of folded up that last experience and put a little bow on it and said that was a different campaign experience. This is going to be something else. Hopefully one that you never have to deal with again.”

One of the biggest changes that Erickson’s encountered has come at campaign rallies with attendance now limited in order to adhere to social distancing guidelines. As a result, Erickson is now part of a “pool” of reporters across five networks who take turns covering the Biden campaign.

Leading up to the first presidential debate on Oct. 10, Erickson compiled information from all of Biden’s events and put it into a document to be used by fellow pool reporters.

“As the campaign reporter who has followed Joe Biden since the beginning, my brain is just file cabinets of everything that he’s said. So, I’m trying to put all of this information into some digestible form so that my colleagues can use it as a resource,” said Erickson.

CBS News was not the pool for the debate, meaning Erickson watched the event from his home in Washington D.C. where he made multiple observations that tied back to his interviews with people on the street.

“Many people were put off by the political bickering, but I think the posture of how both presidential candidates conducted themselves was valuable insight as this is what I have heard from voters throughout the country: the election seems to hinge this year on a battle of personality — good and bad — more than a defined set of policy differences,” said Erickson.

With the first debate in the rear view mirror, Erickson is back on the campaign trail with no shortage of topics to discuss in the wake of President Trump’s announcement on Oct. 2 that he had tested positive for COVID-19. The election stunner was just another unforeseen event in an election that has had no shortage of them.

“President Trump’s COVID-19 diagnosis flipped election foresight upside down once again. I was awoken to the news very early Friday morning so I could start reporting on the Biden campaign’s response,” said Erickson. “I was already in Grand Rapids, Michigan, as I was scheduled to cover the planned Biden event in the city on Friday afternoon. But with the First Family sick with coronavirus, it was unclear if Biden would proceed with campaign travel.”

The second debate originally scheduled for tonight is canceled.

In the meantime, Erickson will be spending a great deal of time on the east coast in Biden’s hometown of Wilmington, Delaware, and in nearby Pennsylvania.

“I’ve been to Delaware a lot now — more than I thought I was going to be,” he said.