Sewanee Alum Working For The Daily Caller

Sewanee students might remember him as the former Editor-in-Chief of The Sewanee Purple, but as of just a few weeks ago, Alex Pappas (C’09) has a new title: Political Reporter for The Daily Caller, a Washington D.C.-based news website launched on January 11 of this year. Editor-in-Chief of the publication and Pappas’ new boss is Tucker Carlson, a Fox News contributor and former co-host of CNN’s Crossfire and MSNBC’s Tucker. Pappas interviewed for the job after hearing from a Sewanee alumnus that Carlson was hiring reporters for a web-based news enterprise. Around Christmas, he received an e-mail offering him the job. Pappas, who had always wanted to cover D.C. politics, asserts that he was impressed with Carlson and publisher Neil Patel’s “vision for their soon-to-be-launched site, based on objective, hard-hitting reporting.” He took the job that day.

Pappas says his earlier journalistic and political pursuits helped pave the way to his dream job. While a student at Sewanee, where he majored in Political Science, he used a stipend from Career Services to spend a summer interning at Meet the Press, an experience he credits as having made him realize that he ultimately wanted to be a Washington reporter. Upon his graduation from Sewanee, Pappas spent eight months working as a reporter for The Press-Register in Mobile, Alabama. This first job, he says, provided “the best training an aspiring journalist could get.” While a reporter for the newspaper, Pappas covered stories ranging from a local politics to a capital murder trial.  Particularly memorable stories, he says, include a feature he wrote about a local airplane enthusiast (work that won him a ride in a vintage Cold War airplane) and a particularly gruesome story of a woman who murdered her husband and buried his remains in her backyard.

Now Pappas is busy covering politics at the national level. One of his most recent assignments included writing about the contentious Massachusetts Senate race that resulted in the election of Republican Scott Brown to replace the late Senator Edward M. Kennedy. With work like this, the job has been anything but a disappointment. In fact, Pappas says, “It still seems surreal to me that I get paid to do what I get to do. I have great mentors in the first class reporting and editorial team Tucker put together.” That the staff consists of young and equally energized reporters doesn’t hurt either. “Quite frankly,” he concludes, “I’m having a blast.”

News readers and political junkies of all creeds can check out The Daily Caller by visiting http://dailycaller.com.