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"I did an interview with the high priest of the Church of Satan my senior year, and it was actually one of the first interviews I ever did," says Zachary Fryer-Biggs over an iced coffee drink in an Annapolis coffee shop last week. "I think he was thoroughly surprised after receiving all these fairly professional e-mails, which at this point I've become quite accustomed to writing, to see myself and my best friend--two high-school seniors, myself looking quite baby-faced as I still do--show up to do this interview, considering, you know, you see him on the History Channel all the time."

Without presuming to speak for Satan's minion, it seems reasonable to assume that after a few minutes of talking to Fryer-Biggs, he forgot about his age. He does look young, even for a 19-year-old college freshman, but he has big ideas. The latest of these is The Epoch, a full-color glossy international affairs magazine he started last year at St. John's College, a small liberal arts college in Annapolis.

The first issue of The Epoch, with the cover tag crisis in darfur came out last November, and Fryer-Biggs feels it was a bit limited by focusing on only one country. He has with him the proof for issue No. 2, governed by religion, which features reports on church-state relations in the U.S. and other issues in Palestine, Afghanistan, and Ireland, to name a few, as well as an article on the state of modern labor unions, an editorial on Barack Obama, and a review of the new Tom Waits album. He was up until 4 in the morning finishing it, he says, and points out that the top margins are a bit off, but that will be fixed before it goes to press.

Opinions on current affairs are hardly rare on college campuses. What sets Epoch apart is that its writers actually report on international events from the comfort of the colonial brick buildings of the St. John's campus. Fryer-Biggs interned at War News Radio last summer, a Swarthmore College project begun in 2005 by 60 Minutes producer David Gelber. Actually, it was Gelber's appearance at Fryer-Biggs' high school in New York that got him interested, and what he really wanted was a job at 60 Minutes. War News Radio uses Skype software to contact sources overseas and produces radio reports. Fryer-Biggs' six-and-a-half-minute report on improvised explosive devices in Iraq appeared on the group's web site in November.

The magazine, he says, is about "applying the War News Radio on a global scale--they specifically only deal with Iraq. While that's probably the story of my generation, you need to go beyond that. You can't really educate--especially a college audience--about the news around the world if you're focusing on one specific hot spot, so you need to expand. Fortunately, Skype works everywhere. The only place we haven't been able to get into is North Korea. But we're trying."

Fryer-Biggs began working on The Epoch before he started at the college, calling ahead to the admissions office to ask about funding. He's selling his stereo for extra cash. He won't discuss how much money he finally got, how much it took to produce the magazine, or, indeed, how many copies of the first issue finally went out. He does say that the college community was resistant to the idea.

Rosemary Harty, communications director for St. John's, says she thought the magazine was well-received, but that given the academic rigors of the college and limited funds available for student activities, "it can be hard to introduce new things."

Change doesn't come easy at St. John's (where this reporter attended college). The last major one was in 1937, when it adopted a great books curriculum--starting with Plato, students read the influential works of Western civilization and discuss them in small classes. The college bookstore, for instance, is more the sort of place a literary person would daydream of opening at the beach someday than the key-chain and sweatshop outlets of larger colleges. Pride and Prejudice shares shelf space with Naked Lunch, although the big lunchtime seller on Wednesday seemed to be a photocopied handout on ancient Greek.

The college is traditionally concerned with loftier affairs than those taking place in the world beyond its borders, but Fryer-Biggs hopes to change that.

"It takes a freshman to introduce something like this to St. John's," he says. "It's not just using the current technology. Trying to take a current-affairs publication and applying it to the Johnny bubble is a very difficult task. The greatest opposition we've faced is trying to prevent the outside world from reaching in."

Later in the evening, Fryer-Biggs takes the copy of issue No. 2 to an editorial board meeting at a downtown bookstore and coffeehouse. Discussion is already in progress for the theme of the next issue. There are six board members, all fellow students, but it's clear that Fryer-Biggs gets the last word.

Oil is suggested, possibly broadened to include alternative energies. "Leftism around the world and international aggression" falls flat (Fryer-Biggs' verdict: "I don't really see it holding up a whole issue.") Fryer-Biggs wants to keep his own politics, and everyone else's, out of things. "I'm a half-Jewish kid from New York," he says. "I think that's indicative of my politics." The privatization of space is mentioned, but discussion goes back to energy. Fryer-Biggs is concerned that it will be seen as too left-leaning, but it will do as a default unless someone comes up with something better. Layout editor Eric Honour makes the only pop-culture reference of the day: "Unless we have an alternative-energy article written by Mr. Burns."

"Well, yeah," Fryer-Biggs says, before changing the discussion to finding out whether their printer gets its paper from the cheaper of two national suppliers.

Email Chris Landers