An Auburn student is staring in a Style Network reality television show called "The Amandas." Elton John played a concert in Beard-Eaves Memorial Coliseum in 1973.
These articles have no relation at first glance, but they both have two common themes: Auburn University and they can be found on the home page of TheWarEagleReader.com headed by editor Jeremy Henderson.
Henderson runs the eclectic, self-proclaimed "daily meta-memoir" of Auburn along with many other contributors, including three former editors of The Auburn Plainsman.
Henderson's love for Auburn and desire to create a website devoted to Auburn stems from traveling to his grandmother's house on the Plains as a child.
"Auburn was like grandmomma's," Henderson said. "It was the special thing."
Henderson came to Auburn in 1997 for college, graduated from Auburn in 2004 with a philosophy degree and worked as a feature writer for a paper in Lubbock, Texas, before moving back to Auburn in 2009.
All the while, Henderson was working on what would eventually become The War Eagle Reader, a website based on the culture of the Auburn community.
"I always thought there was room for the stuff I was seeing," Henderson said. "I thought it could be this catchall, kind of this one-stop shop for everything Auburn-related. Because in Auburn, more than any other college town, the town and the college and the entire vibe is inseparable."
Henderson tries to communicate that vibe through each post on his website.
"Sometimes I ask myself, 'What is this Auburn?'" Henderson said. "What I wanted to do was to get people to feel the same way about Auburn as I do, to think it's as special as I do.
"It's kind of like every post's intent is to answer that question in some weird way. What makes Auburn special? Why do we love it so much?"
Jeremy's wife, Jenny, said her husband wants everyone to feel the same about Auburn as he does.
"I think he views it as a duty to Auburn to tell these stories that maybe no one knows or that people have forgotten, and it's like he's out to convert nonbelievers about how to see Auburn and why they should love it," she said.
Without a print copy of his product, Henderson relies solely on the Internet to get content to readers. Embracing social media was a necessity not only to send information out, but to gather live information as well.
"Twitter and Facebook are huge tools," Henderson said. "Sometimes I stop and think: Where would the site be without them? Not just the dissemination of information, but actually getting information as it happened; you can get details from things like you're there."
Henderson said being in control of the site's social networking presence is not for everyone.
"You feel like you're in a cockpit," Henderson said with a laugh. "You've got things streaming on your left, things updating on the right, notifications and alarms going off and search windows open."
Henderson even does something that would make a notebook-carrying, old-school reporter cringe: He does actual reporting from Twitter.
"I can find little things that can be turned into stories," Henderson said. "You can see if a lot of people are talking about certain thing on campus, and you see it might be a big thing."
Currently, The War Eagle Reader is free, but one of Henderson's latest posts on the website is beseeching his readers to contribute a one-time donation or sign up for a monthly "subscription" to the website.
Henderson describes it as full-time job without anything like full-time compensation.
"There is advertising revenue, but at some point I can't put enough time into it as I have been without bumping it up," Henderson said.
He said he didn't want the website to be a hobby or a side project, adding he still believes the website can be profitable.
"It does make some money, thankfully," Henderson said. "And that was the idea. It wasn't intended as a labor of love. I had this idea, and I still think it's achievable. If I had the right apparatus with which to pull it off, I think it could be as financially successful as it is popular."
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