| Salt Lake City |
 |
 |
| GER |
12 |
16 |
7 |
35 |
 |
| USA |
10 |
13 |
11 |
34 |
|
| NOR |
11 |
7 |
6 |
24 |
|
| CAN |
6 |
3 |
8 |
17 |
|
| RUS |
6 |
6 |
4 |
16 |
|
| AUT |
2 |
4 |
10 |
16 |
|
| ITA |
4 |
4 |
4 |
12 |
|
| FRA |
4 |
5 |
2 |
11 |
|
| SUI |
3 |
2 |
6 |
11 |
|
| NED |
3 |
5 |
0 |
8 |
|
|
|
|
Weekly Reader's eyes on the Olympics
By Twila Van Leer
Deseret News staff writer
Not many of the high-powered print journalists now in Salt Lake City, bumping into each other all over the place as they cover Olympic events, can boast of a potential audience of 11 million. But that's how many schoolchildren could see Winter Games reports generated by Jordan Young and Madison Coburn of Granite District's Bonneville Junior High School.
The two eighth-graders were chosen by Weekly Reader/Teen Newsweek, the nation's largest supplementary education materials publishers, to report on major Olympic competitions and interview top athletes. Their stories will be posted on Weekly Reader's Galaxy Web site,
www.weeklyreader.com/fieldtrip, which is a resource for the millions of students who read Weekly Reader and its secondary school sister publication, Teen Newsweek, published in collaboration with the grownup Newsweek publication read by adults.
"We got a phone call from Teen Newsweek asking us to recommend some students. I asked if they wanted kids who were good socially or good writers. They said, 'find us two perfect students,' so we recommended Madison and Jordan," said English teacher Judy Robbins.
Young started his Olympic reporting stint this week with a telephone interview with Michael York of the New York Rangers hockey team. York is one of the pros who will play with the U.S. hockey entry in the world competitions.
"It was fun. He was willing to give me good information about the Rangers. He treated me with respect and was really down to earth," said Young. The conversation was taped by Jayne Keedle, Teen Newsweek editor, who is accompanying the Utah teens on their reporting excursions.
Coburn's foray into reporting began Thursday night at the ice sheet in Kearns, where she covered the women's speedskating events. "I didn't know much about it. I had to read about how they put the ice together" and learn more about the language of the sport, she said.
Her three-paragraph report will be e-mailed to the magazine for inclusion in Web site reports on events of interest to school youngsters, she said.
Still ahead for the Bonneville reporters: interviews with Madison and Morgan Schoepf, who carried the Olympic torch, and a young girl who danced during the opening ceremonies. Friday, Young expected to be at the site of the doubles luge competition and today, he'll shift to the men's ice hockey final round. He'll get to see — and hopes to meet in person — the player he interviewed by phone. Coburn's next assignment at the venues will take her to the women's giant slalom Sunday.
Madison and Jordan also will share with their peers across the country how they feel about having a world-class event in their neighborhood.
The Olympic assignment is extra special for the Utah teens because they are sharing in the beginning of the second century for the scholastic magazines. Weekly Reader began life in 1902 as Current Events, a name that remained in the American lexicon as the decription of what's going on in the world at any given time.
After all that great experience, how about journalism as a career? Identical shrugs. There's plenty of time for that decision when they've graduated to the grownup Newsweek category.
E-MAIL: tvanleer@desnews.com
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February 16, 2002
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