Young Scoop08 reporters hit the campaign trail

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Presidential candidates keep close tabs on the reporters and bloggers who cover them. Now, they will have to contend with a press outlet that includes staffers who aren't old enough to vote.

Scoop08, now in its second week, is a Web site staffed by high school, college and graduate students who are covering the 2008 presidential race.

The site's founders take a jab at mainstream press coverage in a letter on the Web site, saying Scoop08 will "transcend horse-race politics, focusing instead on the substance -- the characters behind the candidates, the big ideas behind the rhetoric, the trends behind the headlines."

The site boasts about 300 correspondents who will write, for free, from their high schools and colleges, and 22 named editors. It promises feature articles, editorial digests, podcasts, video reports and blogs, and will cover beats like campaign rhetoric, the Green Party and social networking Web sites.

"The first and foremost thing is to engage young people and report on and discuss issues pertaining to young people," said co-founder Alexander Heffner, a 17-year-old senior at the Phillips Academy Andover in Massachusetts.

"We're covering material that's often unreported and often overlooked."

One example is a scheduled story about the hip-hop world's views on Democratic candidate and Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, said Features Editor Vivian Nereim, a 20-year-old junior at Yale University.

"Hip-hop for the past 30 years has sort of been this very traditional barometer of blackness," Nereim explained.

Having a national site for students to contribute allows young journalists to reach a wider audience, said Sam Guzik, Scoop08's national editor and a 19-year-old sophomore at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri.

"There are very few opportunities for any one student journalist to reach out beyond their campus or the bubble of their own high school," Guzik said.

Scoop08 is the inheritor of a tradition of young people covering presidential candidates from a perspective that differs from what adults sometimes think to ask, said Tom Rosenstiel, director of the research organization Project for Excellence in Journalism in Washington.

Younger people, he said, "ask different questions and have different curiosities and are not embarrassed to not know things."

Scoop08 comes equipped not just with fresh talent, but a seasoned advisory board including Newsweek Senior Editor Jonathan Alter, Connecticut Democratic Sen. Joseph Lieberman, former Wyoming Republican Sen. Alan Simpson and National Public Radio host Diane Rehm.

Heffner declined to say how much money Scoop08 has raised to support itself because he was uncomfortable divulging that information as the site's proprietors are applying for non-profit status. He confirmed a New York Times report saying the costs so far have been less than $20,000.

The editorial board holds meetings once a month, using a free conference call service, Nereim said.

She added that running the site involves plenty of work beyond their course load and their already time-consuming student newspaper work.

"We're very ambitious, obviously," she said.