Tom Shevlin is the Rhode Island reporter for the MTV Choose or Lose campaign, which encourages young people to vote.

URI graduate joins MTV's Choose or Lose team as citizen journalist

By: Joe Markman

Posted: 1/25/08

1/25/08 - Tom Shevlin experienced his first sparks of political interest and debate when most University of Rhode Island students were still watching cartoons and discussing the merits of Spiderman versus Batman.

In 1992, when Shevlin was 11 years, his father talked about the presidential election and Shevlin fondly remembers debates at the kitchen table over the national issues of the day.

At 16, Shevlin, whose great-grandfather published the Providence Journal, was a senate page for former U.S. Sen. John Chafee (R-RI).

"Most kids were in school and we were on the Senate floor," Shevlin said.

Today Shevlin is one of 51 citizen journalists for the MTV Choose or Lose initiative. As a recent student of URI and a young person with experience in both politics and journalism, Shevlin was selected this past fall to report on the 2008 presidential campaign on MTV's think.mtv.com Web site.

Last fall Shevlin was searching on a journalist jobs Web site and came across an advertisement for the program. He applied, and two months later, after a lengthy Internet application process, got the job.

On his section of the site, Shevlin posts regular blogs about the presidential campaign from the perspective of a young Rhode Islander. He also riffs on issues ranging from the state's budget deficit to the problem of population loss. Shevlin believes that to understand national issues fully, people have to understand local politics.

"Local news, Rhode Island politics - those are always the kind of issues that have the most impact," he said.

Nine months ago, prior to Shevlin's involvement with Choose or Lose, he created the R.I. Report, a Web site that Shevlin describes as kind of like the Huffington Post. It combines news from local sources and from the blogosphere. He tries to stress the "purity of news" on the site, something that Shevlin has increasingly focused on since he ran R.I. Attorney General candidate Bill Harsch's campaign in 2006.

"I know how to spin people, and I know when I've been spun," Shevlin said.

His biggest pet peeve is intellectual dishonesty, which is why he now prefers journalism to politics. Along with running the R.I. Report Web site, Shevlin works for East Bay Newspapers, which owns The Sakonnet Times and Newport This Week, among others.

His position as a citizen journalist for MTV has provided Shevlin with the ability to promote political awareness to young people in Rhode Island.

"Nowhere is local news more important than in Rhode Island," he said.

In New Hampshire, the youth block made a huge impact on the results of the primaries, Shevlin said. Young people, especially college students, took an active role in registering voters, creating signs and making phone calls.

Shevlin's career ambition is to make headlines and have a broad influence by going into a town like Kingston, R.I. and finding an issue that people are talking about. He said he is proud of his participation in the Choose or Lose initiative because he believes it has been incredibly influential in getting over 20 million young people registered to vote for the 2004 presidential campaign and inspiring millions more to get involved in politics.

MTV, as one of the most widely-recognized global brand for youth, has the ability to reach out to its audience via the technology they use every day, said Shevlin. The Associated Press, a partner of Choose or Lose, can send videos that MTV's citizen journalists have created to mainstream news Web sites around the country. In addition, cell phone users can sign up to receive videos directly on their phones.

Shevlin's profile on think.mtv.com stresses thinking. He writes that it's important to think about things that actually matter, not just which celebrity is in rehab or pregnant. And he hopes that his involvement with the Choose or Lose initiative will not only force him to think, but also inspire others to do the same.