 |
|
March 28, 2005 Vol. 76,
no. 10S
 |
| WEB AND
WORD MASTERS: Legal studies senior Nick Miller
(left) and EECS senior Jesse Young relax in a restaurant where they
often collaborate on Heeltribune.com, the duo's recently launched
website. Heeltribune.com publishes humorous essays and stories written
by college students across the nation.
|
Engineering
the written word
EECS senior co-founds writing website for college
students
Last fall, EECS senior Jesse
Young and his good friend Nick Miller, a legal studies senior, were
looking for a project they could do together that would showcase their
talents. Miller, steeped in the humanities, had a knack for words. Young,
an EECS techie, could code in his sleep. Writing + Web.
On Jan. 26, the two launched www.heeltribune.com, a website for college
writing. The site features first-person essays, editorials and satirical
news pieces written by college students from Berkeley, Harvard, Princeton,
and universities around the country. Since its launch, the site has
received 20,000 hits per month.
"It's a creative outlet for people," Young says. "Students are writing
in blogs anyway, but now they write to us instead."
Heeltribune.com is not a literary journal. Recent stories waxed poetic
on an annual spring "Hot Chick Outbreak," a Peeping Tom moment, and
the delight of prank phone calls. The site follows somewhat in the tradition
of The Onion and Collegehumor.com and its primary purpose is to entertain,
say Young and Miller. That said, the website seeks both lowbrow and
highbrow.
"'Heeltribune' is from heel, meaning the bottom of your foot, and tribune
sounded fancier to us, like it's at the top," says Miller, explaining
the site's name. "We're somewhere in the middle."
EECS alumna Olivia Oo (B.S. '04), now an EE graduate student at Stanford,
contributes to the site. One of her essays, "Call Me Somethin' Else"
(read it on the Engineering News website), chronicles her Asian student
experience at Berkeley with down-to-earth insight and salty wit.
Oo and other writers got their start when they were tapped by Young
and Miller. After asking their friends to contribute, the two also trolled
college blogs, looking for writers they liked and asking them to submit.
Now over 30 writers regularly contribute. Stories go through an internal
voting process before they're published online. Writers contribute for
free.
Young and Miller also write for the site, under super secret pen names.
Writing for and running the site has been all-consuming, they say. It's
taken time ("We skip a lot of school") and money ("Thank God for parents'
credit cards").
"But it's a lot of fun right now," says Young. "We want to keep it going
after graduation."Heeltribune.com wants YOU to contribute. "Don't be
intimidated to try it," says Miller. "Check out our site." Go to www.heeltribune.com
for more information.
|
|
