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CNN Sunday Morning
'STUDENT NEWS' Gives Young People a Voice
Aired February 03, 2002 - 07:35 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: All right. You may be familiar with our CNN newscast that is designed specifically for the classroom. It gives young people a voice and new insight into national and world events. Program used to be called "CNN NEWSROOM." It's been around for a long time. And now it's been relaunched as "CNN STUDENT NEWS." It's poised to bring the Winter Olympics now to the classroom. And the man who will be reporting from Salt Lake City, Michael McManus, another person with a good assignment this morning.
MICHAEL MCMANUS, CNN "STUDENT NEWS" ANCHOR: Absolutely.
O'BRIEN: Welcome. Thanks for being with us.
MCMANUS: Nice to be here.
O'BRIEN: First of all, why the changes? It's been almost 10 years, I think. "CNN NEWSROOM" has been around or thereabouts.
MCMANUS: We've been on the air 13 years.
O'BRIEN: 13 years, there you go. See, I lost track of time. Why the changes?
MCMANUS: Changes are basically done to integrate more with our Web site. As you know, students are very familiar with two mediums now. And that's television and the web. And so, what we're doing is basically integrating the two. And that will provide us basically with a lesson plan and journalism that you can see on television and go the Web site. Or you can go to the Web site and see what's on television.
O'BRIEN: Give us a sense of what -- and this is aimed primarily at high school students, correct? What are they interested in seeing?
MCMANUS: Middle and high school students is the core audience of the show, but the great thing about this show is we also do top journalism for about half the show. And then we're doing in-depth feature reporting for the other half of the show. So if you were watching the show, you were still getting the great journalism that CNN provides us everyday. And we're also delving deeper.
We did a great series earlier this summer, "The other side of Africa," where one of our reporters went to the diamond mines. She went to South Africa. She visited just some of the vineyards there and just all the great history that that country has. So we delved deeper into the feature reporting of our world, really.
O'BRIEN: All right, which brings us to the Olympics in Salt Lake. Your bags are packed. You've got your parka ready.
MCMANUS: Long johns.
O'BRIEN: Yes, this should be a fun assignment. Give us a sense of, you know, that's a hard story to get a focus on, really, you know. How are you holding it down?
MCMANUS: You bring up a great point because everyone knows the Olympic Games have been bought by NBC. So anything at any Olympic venue or any sporting event is not going to be able to be covered by any outside cameras. And so, we decided to take another look at basically what the Olympics were all about.
And so, we're going to start doing the history of Salt Lake. We're going to interview Senator Warren Hatch on just the interesting founding of the city. We're going to talk to Maggie Connor, that's here name. She's two-time Olympic world champion and a 1992 Olympic contender. And we're going to talk to her about the -- how the altitude affects the body, and as well as the psychology.
Miles, as you well know, the higher up you get, the less oxygen in your blood.
O'BRIEN: Right.
MCMANUS: So she's going to tell us about the science behind that. And she's also going to tell us how psychologically an athlete has to be prepared to win as well. We're also going to get into the numbers game. There's thousands of athletes coming. There's hundreds of thousands of fans coming. There's miles of cable being put down. There's, I think, something like 70,000 journalists being accredited. And that's not counting the unaccredited journalists that are going.
So we're going to get into the numbers game with a representative from AT&T. So we're covering the Olympics in just a different perspective, really.
O'BRIEN: You would be remiss though with your audience, if you didn't get into snowboarding a little bit. This is a big year for snowboarding, right?
MCMANUS: Absolutely, absolutely. We're going out there and we're going to talk with the founder of Burt and Snowboards. And we're going -- we're going to have some fun with him. We're going to go snowboarding, but we're also going to talk about the science behind the snowboarding. Those guys can't do all those fancy tricks.
O'BRIEN: So you've got to do the snowboarding for research on the story. I see where you're headed, Mike, with this job. Good job. Well listen, have a great time out there. We look forward to seeing your programs and the efforts. You're going to be doing this as the Olympics go on live, or at least...
MCMANUS: That's right.
O'BRIEN: (INAUDIBLE) that day.
MCMANUS: That's correct. We'll be doing it -- each day, we'll be doing a different segment on the first week of the Olympics. And Miles, if I could just add, I've been with the show about 7.5 years now.
O'BRIEN: Wow.
MCMANUS: And you have always helped us out. And basically, we have two common interests which is space and aviation.
O'BRIEN: Sure, yes.
MCMANUS: And I've called on you many a times. And that's basically what the show is all about is culling the resources of CNN to put together just a really interesting, fantastic program.
O'BRIEN: Well, it's a great program. And it's a good effort, a worthy effort, to try and get high school students interested in the news process.
MCMANUS: Sure.
O'BRIEN: Michael McManus, have a great trip.
MCMANUS: Thank you.
O'BRIEN: Good luck with the relaunch.
MCMANUS: Thank you very much.
O'BRIEN: CNN now "STUDENT NEWS."
MCMANUS: "CNN STUDENT NEWS."
O'BRIEN: Formerly "NEWSROOM."
MCMANUS: That's correct.
O'BRIEN: We appreciate it.
MCMANUS: OK, thank you, Miles.
O'BRIEN: And for more "STUDENT NEWS" Olympic coverage, as Michael referred to, you can log onto their Web site at www.cnnstudentnews.com. And you can reach it also through the CNN web page as well at CNN.com.
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