After being declared the world’s youngest student reporter to have a regular news segment on national television, Patrice Innocenti needed a follow-up act.

Innocenti created a segment for MSNBC, ‘On Campus,’ when she was 18 years old.
The senior broadcast journalism major decided to create the international news website, The World On Campus, based on her experiences as an on-air reporter for ABC News Now and analyst for MSNBC.

Innocenti’s site, theworldoncampus.com, targets college students, with the aim of providing them with up-to-date international news. Anyone can submit videos or written stories to the site, which is updated daily by Innocenti, the editor-in-chief.

World on Campus has not only original stories, but also videos and articles from other news sources such as NBC, CBS and Reuters. Innocenti said on a typical week she gets two original posts for the site.

Devon Heinen, a fourth-year broadcast journalism and sport management major, has produced multiple stories for The World On Campus. He became involved with the site after learning about it from Innocenti, who is in his RTN 565: ‘Television News Producing/Anchoring’ class. Heinen said he enjoys seeing his videos on the site because they have a wider reach than in the classroom.

‘It’s not just college kids looking at the site,’ Heinen said. ‘People at NBC and other major networks can see it. It’s a win-win for everybody. Patrice gets good stuff for her site, and I, as a contributor, get international exposure. It’s a mutual relationship.’

Heinen’s videos have been about the effects of the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, British Columbia, the influence of social networking on college athletics and the economic results of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament being held in Syracuse.

‘With Vancouver especially, everyone had some sort of interest, so you can generate that kind of an interest with an angle that’s not talked about that often and get that many more people interested in your stuff,’ Heinen said.

Aiste Ptakauskaite, a graduate student in the television, radio and film program, is another contributor to The World On Campus. When the website launched, Ptakauskaite said she received an e-mail about it and thought a video story she had done would be a good fit for the website.

Her first story was about the life of an international student on campus and how the student kept their identity.

‘Patrice liked the story, she posted it and came back to me a few months later and asked me to do more stories and said my story get a lot of hits,’ Ptakauskaite said.

Ptakauskaite also did video stories for the website about an art diplomacy conference at Brown University and a social entrepreneurship conference in Denver.

‘I think the website’s a good idea because it increases the voice of students,’ Ptakauskaite said. ‘It’s not just a website, it presents a diverse community of students. The opportunities of the website are still to be explored.’

‘It’s important for students to be able to communicate with each other in different countries and have a place to go to express their opinions and check out what’s happening abroad,’ Innocenti said.

Innocenti said many people overseas have contacted her with positive feedback on the site. Her biggest efforts right now are getting more content up for people to check out, she said.

‘Patrice spent a lot of time and money developing the site and getting it done professionally,’ Heinen said. ‘She’s an amazing person and going to go far — she’s going to be a big name. So, it’s cool to be a part of something as special to her as World on Campus.’

rltoback@syr.edu
 

Published on April 20, 2010 at 12:00 pm