About Scott

Eldridge II, Scott

Editorial Assistant
scott [AT] berkshirepublishing [DOT] com
University of Massachusetts - Amherst
B.A. in Journalism
How did you become a fan? After hiking the woods of the East Coast, I came home (to Massachusetts) looking for a job, and stumbled upon something that really appealed to me in Berkshire: A local publisher, but one that looks at everything with a global view. It had the right feel for what I was looking for, and has so far helped me fill the need to learn something new every day.

Which historical figure would you most like to be, and why? I would have to go with John Peter Zenger, an 18th century journalist who in 1734 was arrested, tried and acquitted, for libel and sedition against the New York Colony’s governor William Cosby. Without Zenger, the idea of a free press and questioning government would not exist today. His actions opened up the road for journalists to do more than just record history, and allowed for stories such as the Watergate scandal, abuse at Abu Ghraib, the Pentagon Papers, and many more news stories to reach the public domain.

If you could be any sports star, who would you be, and why? Ted Williams. Besides being a lifelong Boston Red Sox fan, and a baseball fan in general, Williams is the only athlete I know who loved Moxie soda as much as I do, and that is pretty much the only chance I have for parity with any sports star. I would also have to say Earl Shaffer, who in 1948 became the first person documented to complete a “thru hike” of the full 2,000–plus miles of the Appalachian Trail. If you consider long distance hiking a sport, as many do, and consider that the trail then was poorly marked, managed, and hardly known, this makes Shaffer a sports star.

What technological advancement excites or scares you most? I think the cell phone and laptop are my favorite things right now, because they’ve given me the ability to be all over the place, and not feel tied down. The scariest device though would be the ubiquitous Washington, DC ‘blackberry.’ It already has blurred the line between “at work” and “at home” and shows no signs of stopping.