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When Trump's special envoy to Ukraine resigned, a student newspaper beat everyone to the story
https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2019/09/28/when-trumps-special-envoy-ukraine-resigned-student-newspaper-beat-everyone-story/
Kurt Volker, U.S. special envoy for Ukraine, waves as he arrives prior to a news conference in Kiev, on July 27, during a visit to Ukraine. Volker stepped down from the voluntary position on Friday. (Sergei Supinsky/AFP/Getty Images)
By Brittany Shammas
September 28, 2019 at 12:43 p.m. EDT
One of the latest scoops in the ongoing Trump-Ukraine controversy came not from a major national publication, but from the student newspaper at Arizona State University.
The State Press was first to report Friday’s news that Kurt Volker, U.S. special envoy to Ukraine and executive director of the McCain Institute for International Leadership at the Phoenix-area university, had resigned his State Department post. Volker’s departure came a day after the release of the whistleblower complaint involving President Trump’s July phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, which sparked an impeachment inquiry.
The paper first tweeted the news at 6:10 p.m. Friday, setting off a race among national political reporters to confirm it and racking up thousands of retweets along the way. At 6:18 p.m., the story hit the paper’s website, published alongside dispatches on the university’s clubs and teams. The Associated Press, New York Times and CNN followed with their own reports about an hour later.
Andrew Howard, the State Press’s managing editor and the author of the Volker story, quickly picked up hundreds of new followers on Twitter and accolades from the likes of CNN’s Brian Stelter and the New York Times’s Maggie Haberman.
During a Friday night phone call, Howard told Stelter how he got the scoop.
“We always try to localize national issues and see how they can affect the university,” Howard told Stelter in a Friday night phone call. “When we found out that Volker worked for the university, we just started pursuing the story. That was really it...”
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Kurt Volker, U.S. special envoy for Ukraine, waves as he arrives prior to a news conference in Kiev, on July 27, during a visit to Ukraine. Volker stepped down from the voluntary position on Friday. (Sergei Supinsky/AFP/Getty Images)
By Brittany Shammas
September 28, 2019 at 12:43 p.m. EDT
One of the latest scoops in the ongoing Trump-Ukraine controversy came not from a major national publication, but from the student newspaper at Arizona State University.
The State Press was first to report Friday’s news that Kurt Volker, U.S. special envoy to Ukraine and executive director of the McCain Institute for International Leadership at the Phoenix-area university, had resigned his State Department post. Volker’s departure came a day after the release of the whistleblower complaint involving President Trump’s July phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, which sparked an impeachment inquiry.
The paper first tweeted the news at 6:10 p.m. Friday, setting off a race among national political reporters to confirm it and racking up thousands of retweets along the way. At 6:18 p.m., the story hit the paper’s website, published alongside dispatches on the university’s clubs and teams. The Associated Press, New York Times and CNN followed with their own reports about an hour later.
Andrew Howard, the State Press’s managing editor and the author of the Volker story, quickly picked up hundreds of new followers on Twitter and accolades from the likes of CNN’s Brian Stelter and the New York Times’s Maggie Haberman.
During a Friday night phone call, Howard told Stelter how he got the scoop.
“We always try to localize national issues and see how they can affect the university,” Howard told Stelter in a Friday night phone call. “When we found out that Volker worked for the university, we just started pursuing the story. That was really it...”
</snip>
