JHU Politik, the club behind the weekly opinion-based Politik Press, plans to break new ground by launching an online video series in the near future. The producers hope that the effort will build on the Politik’s growth as a club in recent years, as well as offer an outlet for Hopkins students with a penchant for broadcast journalism to also express their opinions.
Senior Rachel Cohen, an editor-in-chief of the Politik, was optimistic about the club’s new endeavour and the general expansion of the club’s activities.
“I think people are responding to it well,” Cohen said.
Founded in 2008, the student-run publication began with the mission of reporting political news, thereby offering Hopkins students a means to stay informed about political developments on all levels.
“The founding editors just wanted to make Hopkins a more political place and report on what was going on,” Cohen said.
The aims and activities of the Politik have evolved in the intervening years. Since 2012, the publication has become centred on promoting political dialogue by enabling students to voice their opinions on a variety of issues.
“The editors decided... it would be more unique to make it all opinion pieces,” Cohen said. “I’d say the mission is to make Hopkins students engage more with the world around them and form opinions about it.”
The publication has also changed in terms of format. Print has given way to online publishing. Politik’s special issues, however, retain the privilege of physical publication.
“The special issues are longer pieces... They can be reported, or investigative... most of them are interviews,” Cohen said.
Although Rachel expressed some sadness at the marginalization of print, she said the Politik felt publishing almost entirely online was justified.
“Printing costs were really expensive and we just didn’t want to do that anymore,” Cohen said. “I love the concept of newspapers, but I think that students are more likely to read articles if they come to their inboxes.”
Regardless of its objective and form, the Politik and its weekly issues have always been open to the participation of students with any and all views. The club’s staff includes a team of dedicated writers, but they regularly accept frequent or infrequent contributions from other students.
“Many pieces are contributing writers that just pitch and write once,” Cohen said. “If you’re a staff writer, you’re expected to write at least three times a semester.”
The development of the Politik has allowed it to expand the opportunities it offers to Hopkins students. In the spirit of experimenting with different formats, the club’s new video series is one of the ways in which Politik is continuing its growth.
Senior Vicky Plestis, the head manager of the video series, outlined the details of the project as well as her present and future ambitions concerning the series.
Upon returning to Hopkins after an internship with CBS, Plestis became conscious of the limited opportunities, which the university as a whole provides to students who share her interest in broadcast journalism.
“If someone at Hopkins is interested in that kind of career path there really is nothing here for you,” Plestis said.
These considerations, along with her previous contributions to Politik, sparked the idea of creating a journalistic video series — an idea which was met with great interest from Cohen and Alex Clearfield, Politik’s other editor-in-chief.
“They loved it!” Plestis said.
The video series is currently envisioned as a platform for weekly round-table political discussions in which students can participate and share their opinions.
“It would be to broaden the way Hopkins can politically engage on campus,” Plestis said. “There’s this reputation at Hopkins that people are very uninvolved.”
The obstacles the video series has encountered have arisen primarily from technical considerations.
“The scariest part going in was how we were going to find the technical and operations side of things,” Plestis said.
A joint collaboration with the JHU Filmmaking Club has allowed the project to overcome most of those technical obstacles.
“They have the complete operations side of it set down,” Plestis said. “If we didn’t have the Filmmaking Club, this wouldn’t be happening at all.”
Not all initial ambitions concerning the video series have been feasible, however. Plestis stated that she wished the round-table discussions could be recorded live, as opposed to being taped and then released.
“In an ideal world, I’d love if it could be live. There’s something about that down-to-the-wire pressure that I think really pushes you to do the best you can,” Plestis said. “We just don’t have the equipment for that right now.”
The aim of making live recordings is not the only ambition concerning the future of the video series. Another objective is to branch out from round-table discussions on campus.
“If we could get signed-on correspondents or reporters going out into the field and actually doing segments, live or not, that would be fantastic,” Plestis said.
The project is rapidly approaching completion, with the possibility that the Politik video series will arrive by mid-November.
“Hopkins is a more politically engaged campus than it was three years ago, which is a good thing,” Cohen said.
“I think the possibilities are endless,” Plestis added.
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