Cramming in session
At KOS, we know that young people care about news and global issues that affect our future society. On the other side of the world, an American teen has a shared passion for educating youth on news and current affairs and decided to launch The Cramm, an online newsletter which offers a next generation's perspective on the latest news and current affairs. The goal behind The Cramm is to give young people all the tools they need — mainly, information — to take the future into their own hands and make a positive impact on the world.
The backstory on how The Cramm originated was after the 2016 presidential election, when now 18-year-old Olivia Seltzer became inspired to make a difference and inform young people about political matters in a way that they could understand. KOS caught up with Olivia.
Image courtesy of Olivia Seltzer
KOS: Tell us a little bit about your first steps after coming up with the idea. How did The Cramm launch?
Olivia Seltzer (OS): The very first thing I did after coming up with the idea for The Cramm was lock myself in my room for two hours to write a sample newsletter. I wanted to make sure that I could write a newsletter that was engaging, digestible, and informative. Once I had my sample newsletter ready to go, I taught myself how to build a website, found a platform to host The Cramm, and researched tools to grow my audience. I sent out the first ever edition of The Cramm on 1 February 2017, to friends and family members, and from there it began to grow organically via word of-mouth.
KOS: Once you had the platform and there were people who were reading and The Cramm became a stable routine, how did you begin to raise awareness on a global scale?
OS: A few months after starting The Cramm, a group of friends and I went to a local college campus and walked around with clipboards telling people about the newsletter and asking if they wanted to sign up. This turned out to be a great way to raise awareness and grow our audience. Before long, we had young readers all over the world—many of whom had found The Cramm through social media—doing the same in their respective communities, so The Cramm’s reach started expanding outside of the United States.
This led me to create The Cramm Fam, our ambassador program that now has more than 500 youth volunteers worldwide. I also spent hours every week reaching out to activists and young people I admired in the hopes that they’d sign up for The Cramm, along with journalists who were covering topics like emerging media and Generation Z. It took two years before The Cramm got its first major press, but these efforts were instrumental in reaching young people around the world.
KOS: How does The Cramm determine what the most important news is that young people need to know?
OS: There are two factors to how I determine what to include in The Cramm:
I want our audience to be exposed to the same news content that people would be getting on any other news platform, so they’re knowledgeable about the day’s biggest topics.
But since The Cramm’s mission statement is “educate to activate,” I also make an effort to dig for stories that aren’t front page news, but maybe should be. These often end up being human rights or climate change related stories that have a very direct impact on the world, which means that there are opportunities for our audience to get involved and hopefully make a difference.
KOS: How does The Cramm compete with your standard youth news platforms? What makes The Cramm unique compared to the others?
OS: I started The Cramm because I found that young people weren’t reading or watching the news, and as a result we didn’t have the tools and information we needed to create change. This was because most news outlets were created by and targeted toward older demographics. At the time, the few news outlets that wanted to reach my generation weren’t actually run by young people, and as a result, they often missed the mark when it came to the kind of news content we wanted to see.
It was really important to me that The Cramm never dumbed down the news or made light of what was going on in the world. Young people want the same news that any other generation is getting, but we want it in a medium and in a voice that’s accessible to us.
Image Courtesy of Olivia Seltzer
KOS: So not only have you created your own news site, but you have just recently launched a book titled “Cramm this Book” which plays on cramming a ton of information in a short amount of time. What is the main purpose you aim to share with young people through the book?
OS: There’s this assumption in the news that we all have an understanding of the major events that have happened over the past century or so. But in reality, a lot of us don’t, and it can be really hard to get a grasp on what’s happening in the world today without that basic knowledge. I wanted to write a book that gives us the background to the current events shaping the world today, because we can’t possibly solve the world’s problems if we don’t understand them. Cramm This Book asks “how did we get here?” and helps readers answer that question by the end of the book, so we can all come together to solve the problems facing our world.
KOS: Launching a platform like The Cramm at 12-years-old is an achievement in itself because it’s not everyday you pass a 12- year-old with a passion for journalism and current affairs. Where did your passion for journalism come from at such a young age?
OS: Funnily enough, I actually didn’t have any interest in journalism prior to starting The Cramm. I loved writing — I had written a four hundred page fiction book just a couple years earlier — but non fiction never particularly appealed to me, probably because, at that age, the only non-fiction I was reading was textbooks.
I only became interested in journalism once I realised that I could use my passion for writing to solve a problem I had identified in the media and, hopefully, make a difference in the world.
KOS: You have expressed an interest in current affairs and politics, as you have recently announced that you are going to Harvard University to study politics. Tell us a bit about this degree and your future career ambition in this space.
OS: My whole life, I’ve always been very passionate about the world — and the people in it. My great-grandparents were Jewish refugees who were forced to flee the Soviet Union due to the pogroms, and my grandfather was an undocumented immigrant from Mexico City, so I grew up with a strong awareness of the problems our world is facing and an equally strong desire to create change. I’m looking forward to diving into political science and social justice in college to further give myself the tools I need to do so.
I’m not entirely sure of my ultimate career ambitions, but I do know I always want to be doing something that works to put more good into the world.
KOS: What have been some of the responses from readers of The Cramm in terms of their ability to connect with and understand global issues that will affect their future?
OS: The reaction from our readers has truly been so incredible. I always feel so honoured to have so many people reading The Cramm and actually utilising it in the way I had hoped. We’ve had young people get involved in charities (or even start their own!), participate in marches and protests, start clubs at their schools to discuss politics and take a monthly action to raise awareness about a current event, and exercise their right to vote.
We’ve even had young people start having the important conversations about the issues that matter, which I think is a valuable first step in making a difference.
KOS: The Cramm now includes a global editorial team of writers and editors from a range of ages in numerous countries. Where do you see the newsletter heading in the next five years?
OS: In the future, I’d love to expand on the current newsletter format and create a 24-hour live news site with journalists and correspondents around the world that updates as global news events happen. I’d also really love to dive into the audio and visual space, so The Cramm effectively reaches Gen Z across multiple platforms.
“Everyone - and I cannot stress this enough — can make a difference, regardless of age.
You should never let your age — or someone’s perception of you as a result of your age — inhibit you.
If you have the passion to create change, go do it. ”
Image Courtesy of Olivia Seltzer
WORDS: SARAH RAMANTANIS
PHOTOGRAPHY: OLIVIA SELTZER
PHOTOGRAPHY: OLIVIA SELTZER
