Amidst the usual amalgamation of flyers outside the Treehouse, one flyer caught third-year College student Josh Cincinnati's eye -- the University's cable channel, WHOO-TV, was requesting ideas for new television shows.
Amidst the usual stacks of colorful playthings stacked on racks in the local Toys 'R' Us, one toy stood out above the rest -- a "Little Tykes" $9.99 toy microphone.
And despite WHOO-TV having trouble setting up and the microphone's batteries being dead, the two seemingly unconnected events were two of the sparks that led to Hoos News as it exists today. Nine episodes and thousands of viewers later, one has to wonder -- where did it all begin?
During his second year, Cincinnati, a former Cavalier Daily Life columnist, attended an interest meeting upon seeing WHOO-TV's flyer. The pilot script of what was then called "The Cavalier Daily Show" -- a "Daily Show" style news show -- was set up, and things seemed to be running smoothly.
However, busy schedules and WHOO-TV's problems getting set up combined to prevent the show from becoming reality.
Cincinnati dropped the idea, but six months later, current third-year College student Mostafa Abdelkarim inquired about the show.
Abdelkarim suggested putting the episodes online and came up with a title for the show -- "Hoos News."
The first weekend of their third year, before classes had started, Abdelkarim and Cincinnati met to plan the first episode.
"We had plenty of free time and we used damn near all of it," Cincinnati said.
Then, they had to figure out where to film headlines.
"After weeks -- weeks being minutes -- we had a location," Cincinnati said.
The location? According to Episode 5 of Hoos News, "You know that island in 'Lost'? Around there."
Once the location (still a secret!), the main feature (the new O-hill) and a rough script were ready, Hoos News began filming.
"We were standing outside O-Hill with an umbrella in one hand and a toy microphone in the other," Abdelkarim said. "We didn't know how outrageous we should be in public."
They spent 12 hours filming that first Saturday.
"There was this one line, 'fresh succulent first years,' that we taped literally 22 times," Cincinnati said.
Once filming was over, Cincinnati and Abdelkarim spent their first week of school in Clemons, often until two or three in the morning, cutting an hour and a half of footage into a 25-minute episode.
"We're like, people are going to love this," Abdelkarim said. "We're cracking up too. The three people that are actually there are looking at us like we're crazy."
In total, the episode took about 50 hours to complete.
After a few months, Cincinnati said, word of Hoos News "started spreading like wildfire."
"Now we faced a greater challenge -- keeping it up, maintaining the humor and professionalism we started with, during the typically very rough third year," Cincinnati said.
Hoos News decided it would be reasonable to produce a new episode every two to three weeks.
"With every new episode, we had new people involved," Abdelkarim said.
Second-year Engineering student Javed Mondal, currently executive producer of Hoos News, said he was initially "kind of swatted away."
Abdelkarim explained they wanted to keep it a small group.
Now, their team has expanded to incorporate various positions including headline writers, photo editors, support editors, main editors and camera people.
Along with the team, Hoos News' fame has also expanded.
"There's the occasional person who gives us the double take and is like, 'Hey, you were just on my computer,'" Abdelkarim said.
And as word spreads, Cincinnati said the Hoos News team is getting into their own groove.
"We've developed our own TV personalities," Abdelkarim said. "My voice is not at all like it is on Hoos News. When we were playing around with the 'reporter's voice' in Clemons, people were just staring at us. I'm sure they were thinking, 'Seriously, that voice is ridiculous!'"
In addition to Abdelkarim's voice, another staple on the show is Prof. Larry J. Sabato.
"Our end goal -- I'll stop the show and die a happy man -- is if we could get Larry J. Sabato and Jon Stewart on the show simultaneously," Cincinnati said.
"We couldn't escape" the picture of Sabato we used in Episode 1. "Now it's become our own tradition to use it in some way, shape or form in every episode."
While such aspects of Hoos News are constant, the topics the show covers are ever-changing. Episode 8, for example, featured Bid Day.
"I'm like in this huddle, throwing up some kid in the air and screaming 'Brian!'" Abdelkarim said."I'm not in a frat, and yet, being there was just amazing. And that's the point. We wanted to give that inside look to everyone at U.Va."
Cincinnati said Hoos News hopes to get people really engaged in the University.
"Since I've gotten to U.Va., I may not follow outside news as much," Abdelkarim said. "There's so much going on here ... And while Hoos News continues to report on U.Va., it sort of blends into that culture and becomes integrated into the U.Va. society."
One of the things that makes this integration easier -- and makes the show particularly unique -- is the fact that Hoos News is online.
"You can get people interested and involved in ways far beyond the capabilities of normal TV," Cincinnati said.
Furthermore, after some research, Cincinnati has been able to make the show available in Quicktime, Google Video and podcast.
"The show is really cutting edge in many ways," Cincinnati said. "As you can probably imagine, my love for satirical news comedy is only eclipsed by my love of all things geeky. The combination of passions has helped the show immensely."
Another thing that has helped Hoos News is the resources available at the University, particularly the Digital Media Lab.
"It just goes to show, if you have the drive and the desire, we have the resources here at the University," Cincinnati said.
As a result, Cincinnati said, producing Hoos News has been "relatively cheap," -- a total budget of about $200.
These resources have also helped Hoos News become what "seems, [to our knowledge], to be the most consistently produced online college news show," Abdelkarim said.
Increasing efficiency has also helped Hoos News be consistent, Cincinnati said.
In the first episode, Cincinnati memorized three paragraphs for the introduction -- it took six or seven takes for him to get it right.
"The first couple of episodes, there are tapes and tapes of us laughing because we couldn't get the line down," Cincinnati said.
Initially, the Hoos News crew would write everything out. In contrast, Episode 8 was completely improvised.
"By the later episodes, the spontaneity was partly a function of school work kicking in," Cincinnati said. "We couldn't sit down and plan every segment [in detail] like we did with the first couple of episodes."
Discarding this "safety blanket" of a script, according to Abdelkarim, has provided some interesting experiences. Cincinnati said the "Vagina Monologues" shoot provided 30 minutes of "hysterical" footage.
"A lot of cases, you'll see the camcorder shaking," Cincinnati said. "I was holding it and couldn't control my laughter."
As the Hoos News crew gets to the point where they are "almost on cruise control," as Abdelkarim put it, their audience continues to grow -- Cincinnati estimates about 10,000 people have seen the show.
Hoos News also has higher hopes -- they wish to compile DVDs of all the Hoos News seasons and donate them to Clemons Library to serve as a "video U.Va. diary," according to Abdelkarim.
"Not to sound cheeky, but one of our goals is to maintain a living history," Cincinnati said. "It's like taking pages of our own perspective of what happened at U.Va. and leaving it for future generations."
Yet Hoos News' dreams reach even further -- they have e-mailed Comedy Central and M-TV.
"They've yet to return our phone calls, e-mails, pigeon carriers," Cincinnati said.
But despite this, the Hoos News crew said they have gained a lot from their experiences.
"The fact that it is such a great team [is] what really makes it worthwhile" Abdelkarim said. "We're all interested in different aspects of the same medium. But it's such a team effort. And if Josh and I weren't friends, we wouldn't be able to work together this much."
Cincinnati agreed with his friend and co-creator.
"We all respect each other [and] like being around each other," Cincinnati said. "Everyone who works on the show shares the same passion, and we all love doing it."
The crew has also gotten a lot out of Hoos News on an individual basis.
"Final Cut Pro mastery, at the very least," Cincinnati said.
But they said they have gained much more than just that.
"I've gotten a great appreciation for people who actually do this for a living," Cincinnati said. "It is an awful lot of work, but when you realize the end product is viewed by so many and people recognize how much energy and passion you put into the show, it makes it all worthwhile, much to my GPA's dismay. There are few things I've done in my life that I could classify as 'labors of love,' but Hoos News is definitely up there. School work is not -- just to clarify."
Hoos News has also come to mean a lot to Abdelkarim.
"I've sort of realized how much I love this University and how much I'm going to miss it," Abdelkarim said. There are "people I never met until that interview in front of the camera -- you see how everyone connects with each other. It's just going to make it that much harder to leave this school. The fact that people take the time to watch ... it's touching. It really really is."
Read More
It’s okay not to be okay
By Mai Hukuoka | 3 days agoWhether talking to a friend, a loved one or a professional, it is so necessary, and human, to need more than you can provide for yourself.
Taking a break at Tangerines Kitchen
By Charley Thomas | 5 days agoWhat the restaurant somewhat lacks in ambiance, it compensates for in tasty dishes and prompt service.
Virginia Policy Lab — a hub for student-led policy action
By Katherine Haden | December 9, 2024Students propose their own projects and collaborate with other members to research their issues of interest, brainstorm solutions and write policy proposals.
