A Michigan State University journalism student is among a dozen college reporters around the country chosen for a Washington Post internet project.
Andrew Krietz is a senior from Portage, Michigan. In the fall, he’ll become editor in chief of the MSU campus newspaper, the State News.
This summer, along with an internship at the Muskegon Chronicle and MLive.com, Krietz is working on The 12, a series of blogs on the Tumblr website.
You can follow the project at the12.washingtonpost.com.
He tells WKAR’s Scott Pohl that The 12 is tracking issues of importance to young voters across the nation this year.
ANDREW KRIETZ: Essentially, they’re trying to get a bunch of student journalists together across the country in 12 swing states for the 2012 election. Throughout this summer and leading up to the election, myself and 11 other student journalists have been compiling, curating and aggregating from each individual swing state, to put on this Tumblr blog for the Washington Post, from a student journalist, young person’s, perspective.
SCOTT POHL: So what have you already been working on this summer for the site?
KRIETZ: So far this summer, I believe this week is about the third week that I’ve been doing this, and I’ve been covering issues on the recent abortion debate in the Michigan state legislature. I’ve talked about tuition at MSU and across the state.
In moving forward, I’ll be looking at issues on national security, immigration, and when we get closer to the election, what young people are thinking, whether they’re going to vote for Obama or for Romney.
I’m essentially the point person in this entire project. I’ll be the incoming editor in chief of the State News for this upcoming academic year, and in moving forward, I’m going to be looking at what the State News is publishing. Some of the reporters and writers for the State News also will have a chance to get their name out there as well.
POHL: Do you know whether some of this content will be either published in the print version of the Washington Post, or directly on their website, as opposed to Tumblr? I’m just wondering about the exposure you’ll get beyond Tumblr, if any.
KRIETZ: The content will be going on The 12 site which is hosted by Tumblr, but if you go to Postpolitics.com, there’s going to be a section on there, I believe it’s already up there, that is already displaying some content that’s already been published on The 12 site.
When we go in to publish our posts and to tag our posts, we’re asked to tag the post with the state that we’re from. So, for example, if I tag a post with Michigan and you go to Postpolitics.com, you’ll see my posts with the Michigan tag there. It pulls content from The 12 and onto the Postpolitics website.
POHL: Will we be seeing some of this material in the pages of the State News this fall?
KRIETZ: Absolutely, at least tentatively. That’s something that I want to work out with the professional staff there, and reporters and writers. If we’re putting State News content, aggregating that, curating that to The 12 site, we’ll want our readers as well to take a look at what’s going on. Yes, definitely, I want to put that on the front page, somewhere on our website. Time will tell where that goes.
POHL: As a young journalist, one who’s even still in college, this kind of national exposure can only help when graduation comes and it’s time to start job hunting, wouldn’t you say?
KRIETZ: Absolutely. I’m already looking around for opportunities, and of course by graduation, I want to have all these applications out there. Something I can put on my resume’ is great, but I think the bigger picture here is we’re moving into an important election. All elections are really important, but you want to have those different perspectives from a number of different people, and I think this is a project that will do just that.
Of course, being biased toward the State News, I’m really excited to get our publication out there, and get the work of my reporters out there as well.
