Cory Booker Teams Up to Build a News Site for Young People

Culture

Cory Booker, the Newark Democratic mayor who ran into trouble earlier by criticizing President Obama’s attacks on Bain Capital, has co-founded a news aggregation site targeted to millennials.

Booker, who has over 1 million Twitter followers, will co-launch later this summer #waywire, a news aggregation site where the former firefighter and his partners former Gilt Groupe executive Nathan Richardson and Sarah Ross (Ashton Kutcher’s Twitter manager) will try to address the millennial generation’s concerns.  

Booker told the Newark Star-Ledger that #waywire is a "way for people to consume information, ideas and media, but more importantly also to let their own voices be heard, engage in a different way." He added, "I’ve always been very compelled about the democratizing force in social media that is getting more voices engaged in the larger dialogue.”

#waywire has reportedly raised $1.75 million so far from investors such as Google’s executive chairman Eric Schmidt, Lady Gaga's business manager Troy Carter and John Ham, co-founder of live-streaming service Ustream.