Nick Wirth: The BlueOregon Fellow

blueoregon admin

Today's a big day for BlueOregon.

Today, Nick Wirth starts as the first BlueOregon Fellow. What's that? In short, a paid internship in progressive blogging - designed to serve the BlueOregon community.

You won't often see Nick's name posted. While he'll certainly blog over his own name from time to time, more often he'll be the "Voice of BlueOregon." He'll be posting those in-the-news, elsewhere, and open-discussion items that kick off conversation around here, joining our regular co-editors in that effort (and taking over the bulk of it.)

We've often called BlueOregon a "labor of love" run by volunteers. But it's true that the BlogAds and Google Ads bring in a little cash. (And thank you to our sponsors for that!) We've been saving our pennies, and now it'll pay off.

We announced the Fellowship over a month ago - and hoped to move quickly. We had no idea how overwhelming a response we'd get. We had two dozen applicants, a huge response for an application that required a healthy dose of original writing. Five of our contributors reviewed the initial applications, we asked five finalists to send us even more writing, and we settled in on Nick.

So, who is this Nick Wirth guy?

Nick's a junior at Lewis & Clark College - and a native of the Twin Cities region of Minnesota. Last summer, he helped organize a statewide youth organizing campaign for the Minnesota state party. He's also the president of the latest incarnation of the Lewis & Clark College Democrats.

We think he's ready to dive right in to BlueOregon. As one of our application reviewers told us, Nick has "all the pieces in place -- political experience, blogsense, and good writing."

So, welcome to BlueOregon, Nick!

And without further ado... back to your regularly scheduled programming.

By blueoregon admin Sept. 04, 2007