With the election less than a week away, I’m beginning to feel the same mix of anxiety and excitement that many of you are. Anxiety because there is so much at stake and no one knows how things will turn out or how people will react. Excitement because I’ll be in a newsroom on election night.
But not a newsroom where I am a cog in a wheel—a newsroom full of university students and recent graduates working in collaboration with community news to do election coverage for the first time. It is a big lift for everyone. The collaboration has been going on for months with our Voter Voices initiative, tabling on the MSU campus and story sharing. Now the big night is finally here.
At least 10 members of Bucket List Community News’s team are joining the students at Met Media from Metropolitan State University of Denver (MSU) in a collaborative journalism project to cover the 2024 election. The Metropolitan newspaper, Met TV and Bucket List will work alongside one another in the Met Media newsroom at the Tivoli Student Union to help you make sense of the evening through the lens of Gen Z and Millennial voices.
In addition, students from Met TV, in collaboration with Bucket List, are producing a half-hour of coverage for a university-led project called Student News Live. Starting at noon on election day and lasting 24 hours, 122 newsrooms will take turns providing election coverage from their respective states to a national streaming audience. MSU’s contribution will go from 5 p.m. to 5:30 pm MT/7 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. ET and will air live on studentnewslive.com, iHeart.com and the iHeart radio app, among other platforms.
It is unprecedented for university students and recent graduates to drive the train on election night. Bucket List‘s journalism entrepreneurs and multimedia journalists are eager to do their part. They will cover the final hours of voting at the polls and will monitor important races to provide up-to-the-minute results. They will produce videos and stories about the races, voter reactions, and provide thoughtful analysis. Additionally, Gary Shapiro, a former 9News anchor, will serve as an advisor for all of us.
We are thrilled and privileged to have this opportunity, and we invite you to join and support us. Please check in during the evening and contribute to the effort to ensure our team is paid and well-fed with pizza and refreshments. We are hoping to raise $1,000 or more. Bucket List is community-supported. We do what we do to provide the community with reliable local news and mentor the next generation of journalists through internships and apprenticeships in collaboration with you, our community. Contribute to our worthwhile effort today and watch your vote count on election night. Are you with us?
