Can Alexander Heffner, a 19-year-old first-year undergraduate at Harvard transform the face of journalism for his generation?
This piece was a day brightener for me because a young person got involved in making the world a more informed place for people who have been largely ignored in previous elections. Last year, Heffner created an online magazine entitled Scoop08 that was exclusively written by 18-to-25 year olds, with a mission to bring a new generation to a better understanding of politics. According to the article, it became a national student online newspaper and caught the wave that carried Obama all the way to the White House.
This election answered the question for me, where are all the college students and why aren’t they voting? Apparently, the answer was that traditional news sources (television, magazines, newspapers) weren’t reaching this audience of Americans. So, this enterprising young man found a way to connect with a large group of people by using writers who could relate to this particular audience and placed the end result online.
And you saw the results in this past election—college students came out in droves to vote for the first time in ages. Politicians and traditional media outlets could hardly ignore the numbers of student voters exercising their political muscle and registering their mark as a voice to be reckoned with in the future.
Scoop08 has been reinvented as Scoop44, a daily online magazine designed to “serve as the distinct source of news affecting young Americans,” according to Heffner, who believes that there is a place for his magazine given the American press’s loss of credibility during the Bush administration.
My generation has left a truckload of unsolvable problems for the next group to deal with, and some of us, (myself excluded, of course), have voted out of ignorance and tradition rather than paying attention to the issues. Smart, young minds need to be involved, and more importantly, need to be informed in order to make wise political choices.
If online newsmagazines are the answer for reaching this new generation of voters, I’m all for it. If print newspapers want to stay in business, now is the time to get creative and stop doing “business as usual.”
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Interesting point. I've never even heard of "Scoopo8" until today. It is very important for people my age (I'm 19) and older to know more about politics, and at the very least become more informed voters. I voted for Obama, but now that he's actually in office I've not been keeping up with what he's been doing, and I should.
ReplyDeleteI don't necessarily feel that magazines and newspapers aren't creative. I feel that the readily available access of the Internet, and the many features that come along with it give it a greater preference.
Great Post, I have never heard of this but I will be checking it out. It's very cool to have a 19 year old creating a website for young people so they can better understand politics. I pretty much had to learn some of the terms on my own while I was trying to learn a little about politics but I am glad that I have help now.
ReplyDeleteI don't know if I agree with the logic that college students were urged to vote due to the new method of reaching my age group.
ReplyDeleteI think this took place because of the historic election from which we were able to witness and make a difference of.