|
High school and college students across the country to cover the ’08 race in
groundbreaking, grassroots journalistic effort
November 1, 2007
ANDOVER — Phillips Academy senior Alexander Heffner and Yale University
junior Andrew Mangino have given birth to an idea that directly injects
students—high school and college—into the wild and woolly world of
presidential campaign journalism. On Sunday, November 4th, they launch
Scoop08, an innovative new interactive journalistic endeavor involving
hundreds of student reporters from across the country. The nonpartisan
online publication will report in-depth and exclusively on topics affecting
the 2008 presidential election and how they impact young Americans, with the
intent of breaking news of interest to all generations from a fresh
perspective.
This Sunday, the premiere edition of the first national student online
newspaper goes live at www.scoop08.com. Scoop08
will publish hard reporting, interviews, opinion, and analysis by a new and
emerging generation of leaders. Its founders say their reporting will focus
on unorthodox angles, under-reported issues, and grassroots interests from
that generation’s perspective. Scoop08 also will employ innovative new
technologies and platforms to disseminate podcasts, video reports, Weblogs,
and other offerings from grassroots contributors as well as a vast, diverse
network of staff reporters and editors just on the edges of voting age. From
day one, Heffner said, “we’ll be looking for new contributors, welcoming
submissions from individuals nationwide, giving interested students an
unparalleled opportunity and unprecedented access to a national audience.”
“Our mission is to offer coverage that is refreshing, revealing, and
challenging in an innovative way,” Heffner said. “We want to engage young
people in this election.” By engaging students online, the first point of
reference for many students’ academic, social, professional, and political
lives, Heffner and Mangino have stirred up a storm of enthusiasm—already
signing up more than 300 student journalists on campuses from coast to
coast.
They are also attracting the attention of their mentors in the MSM—or Main
Stream Media, as it used to be called. Their advisory board boasts
heavyweights from points all along the political spectrum—William F.
Buckley, Jonathan Alter, Judy Woodruff, Frank Rich, Gary Hart, Joe
Lieberman, Alan Simpson, and Norman Ornstein, among others. Buckley and the
New York Times reporter Katharine Seelye have already written about Scoop08.
“What especially attracts attention is the arrant boldness of the venture,”
Buckley wrote last spring. “At least Henry Luce and Briton Hadden waited
until they were 23 to launch their revolution.” Heffner is 17, Mangino is
20. Alter noted that “Scoop08 is a wonderful addition to the media scrum, in
a year when young people may make the difference.”
Heffner said he and Mangino, who met working on a political campaign in
2006, created Scoop08 last spring out of frustration with the void of
opportunities they saw for national student journalism and were motivated by
the impact they felt students could have in the 2008 presidential race.
With a number of connections both to the political world and Fourth Estate,
an impressive intellectual and creativity endowment, and large doses of
youthful chutzpah and energy, the two students and their staff are primed to
rattle the cages of candidates and established pundits. Their approach shows
imagination. Eschewing many typical “beats,” the young editors have staked
out broad, idea-based subjects such as rhetoric, democracy, media, and
political theory.
Schools and colleges represented in the all-volunteer staff range from
Andover to Yale to Ohio University to Arizona State to Washington University
in St. Louis to Tamalpais High School in Mill Valley, Calif. Andover
graduate Prateek Kumar ’07, now a Harvard freshman, serves as international
editor and oversees a field of international correspondents as well. Heffner
said that the breadth, depth, and diversity of the staff and contributors
are of critical importance to the balance of the enterprise. Another Andover
student, Jack Dickey ’09, has enlisted as a contributor.
Heffner, a native of New York, is no stranger to precocious journalistic
endeavors. Over the past several years he has founded and hosted a series of
political talk programs on Phillips Academy’s campus station, WPAA, which
have featured prominent politicians and journalists. Last year, he broadcast
several shows live over the Web. This year, as general manager of the
station, Heffner has ambitious plans that will obviously benefit from the
proximity of Scoop08. How does he do it all, with the workload of an Andover
student and college applications looming? “It’s all very feasible,” he
laughs, “in a 48-hour day.”
|
