Junior reports on young voters for MTV
An English and journalism major at UM is helping to rock the vote as a citizen journalist for MTV.
Haley Crum, who is also a reporter for The Daily Mississippian, UM’s student-run newspaper, was picked along with 50 other people, one from every state and the District of Columbia, to be part of MTV’s Street Team ’08. The team is responsible for covering political and social stories that matter to young people in their respective states. MTV provides the team with all the gear they need to make their stories possible.
Crum has posted at least eight blog entries and seven videos on www.think.mtv.com since she started in January. She’ll continue her gig with MTV until the presidential elections in November.
“The cool thing about working for MTV is that you get to report from a perspective that is often overlooked—the youth perspective,” Crum says. “With that, though, come many challenges. Being a citizen journalist for MTV, I come up with all of my own story ideas, find and reach out to sources on my own, and I am responsible for shooting all of the video footage, editing, reporting and writing that make these stories what they are. It’s great to have so much creative control of your own work, but at the same time it puts a lot of pressure and responsibility on you, too.”
Crum says she has to schedule her time carefully to make sure she puts her education first, but her professors understand when she needs to miss or leave class early to work on an MTV assignment, as long as she doesn’t do it too often.
“That’s one of the great things about this university. The teachers expect you to do your best, but they also recognize that you have other life responsibilities, as well, and will work with you to make sure you are successful in everything you do.”
To see Crum’s blogs and vlogs, as well as the work of the citizen journalists from other states, go to www.think.mtv.com and click on Street Team ’08.
