May 14, 2012
In Travis Irvine’s application to Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism, he wrote that he wanted his career to include travel, filmmaking, comedy, politics and, oh yes, journalism.
An eclectic list to be sure, but the 28-year-old polymath has managed to do all of the above. In 2007, he ran for mayor of his hometown of Bexley, Ohio, and three years later ran for Congress in Ohio’s 12th District. He’s produced movies, campaign commercials and Internet videos, and has performed stand-up comedy around the country. As he picks up his M.S. degree in journalism on May 16 and ticks off the last item on his list, Irvine says, “I’ve learned that I can find a way to do something that combines all five.”
Irvine, who is already at work on a book, takes a broad view of journalism. Growing up, he practiced impressions and wrote humor pieces. He wasn’t merely the class clown, graduating from high school in 2002 with a 4.0 average. He enrolled in Ohio University’s Scripps College of Communication, hoping to become a weatherman. “Instead, I kept falling asleep in meteorology class,” he says.
During college he landed internships at NBC’s London bureau and The Today Show, and then joined a comedy troupe. While the group was on a surfing trip, raccoons attacked their camp, eating all the food. That incident inspired Irvine’s first film, “Coons! Night of the Bandits of the Night” with the tagline, “They come for your food ... they stay for your FLESH!” It was acquired by Troma Entertainment in 2006, the same year he graduated with a degree in communications.
Read the full story by Alysia Santo ’11, Assistant Editor, Columbia Journalism Review
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Travis Irvine ’12 
