After a Fall term that brought national media coverage, the Dartmouth Jack-O-Lantern humor magazine recently debuted a new project that cannot be kidnapped.
Over winter break, the Jacko launched PoliticalUnderground.com -- a student-run website dedicated to political satire.
The website features work from about two dozen contributors and content that resembles humor from Comedy Central's "The Daily Show," according to former Jacko Editor-in-Chief Calvin Newport '04. However, Newport said the project's contributors have striven to make the web site unique and unlike typical late night talk show-brand humor.
"We're using previous attempts at political humor as a model of what not to do," Newport said.
The Political Underground website is "more irreverent and tongue-in-cheek," Newport said. "It's objective and disconnected from the process itself."
Jacko contributor Matt Gens '06 said the website is "a lot different from the Jacko things that you've seen in the past."
The new Jacko website is particularly timely, according to Gens, because of recent spike in political activism on campus.
"I think it's on the forefront of people's minds because of the primary coming up here soon," Gens said.
The Jacko decided to create a new web site, according to Newport, rather than incorporate the new political humor into its old web site in order to dupe campaign organizations.
"Part of the reason we took the name Political Underground," Newport said, "was because we wanted to see how many groups would give us press credentials not knowing who we were, thinking that we were just another student political group."
In fact, the web site was recently granted an interview on that premise with former presidential candidate Richard Gephardt.
During the interview, "Gephardt compared himself to Seabiscuit," Newport said. "He also blamed me for the economy turning downwards and there were several awkward pauses. We take complete responsibility for Gephardt's defeat in Iowa."
According to Newport, the web site is divided up into two primary segments -- a detailed section, with elaborate spoof pieces, and a news-flash section that is updated with smaller blurbs multiple times throughout the week.
Even though the Jacko's latest effort does not involve Keggy, the impact of the keg character is stamped on the project. Newport said that the humor magazine decided to forgo Committee On Student Organizations funding, using revenue generated from the sale of Keggy T-shirts to fund the project instead.
Newport said that the private funding would afford the humor magazine more creative leeway on the web site.
Although the web site was launched over break, most students indicated that they were unaware of the Jacko's latest venture
Michael Stroup '06 said he "had no idea what the Jacko is doing."
"The last thing I saw of theirs was the fake Cosmopolitan that they did last fall," Stroup said.
Elisabeth Sherman '06 said she knew about the new Jacko website. However, she said that the only reason that she knew about it was because she had a friend on the Jacko staff.
The site has had between 70 and 100 visitors a day, according to Newport.
However, Newport said that he expected the amount of site visits to drastically increase once the Jacko advertisement of the project begins in earnest.
Jacko plans on hanging posters up around campus to advertise the web site, Newport said.
Newport also indicated that the humor magazine hoped to do one or two "more interesting and fun things to promote the site."
Newport said the Jacko has high aspirations for its website.
"We plan on using it to be as obnoxious as possible, Newport said. "It is our right as citizens."
