During my 18 years here at The Telegraph, I’ve had the opportunity to meet and interview dozens of presidential candidates, either as the newsroom coordinator of our presidential primary coverage or, this time around, as a member of the newspaper’s editorial board.

Among those candidates were two who ultimately made it all the way to the Oval Office: Democrat William Jefferson Clinton in 1992 and Republican George Walker Bush in 2000.

And, given that our editorial board has interviewed most of the major candidates so far this year, it’s my expectation that we’ve already met or will meet the individual who will become the 44th president of the United States.

But there’s something else that has made this year’s presidential editorial board sessions special – and that’s been our partnership with instructor Jim Pfeiffer and his video production and broadcasting students at Nashua High School South.

Unlike previous election cycles, when our editorial board met with the presidential candidates in the front conference room of our corporate offices in Hudson, we agreed to conduct the interviews in the school’s TV production studios.

For us, the advantages were obvious: an opportunity to broadcast the interviews live to our Web site and then post the full one-hour video the next day on both www.nashuatelegraph.com and our sister site, www.nhprimary.com. So far, we’ve completed 12 of the 16 interviews with the major candidates for president, all of which are available for viewing on our two Web sites.

We’re just waiting to pin down exact dates with two former governors — Rudy Giuliani of New York and Mike Huckabee of Arkansas. We’ve had less success with former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson and California Rep. Duncan Hunter, though I’m still somewhat hopeful.

For the students, who attend both North and South, they had an opportunity to get some real-life experience producing some "live" interviews as part of the curriculum. The fact that they got to learn by videotaping some nationally known politicians — current and former governors, congressmen and senators — only added to the excitement.

And for voters, the videos are an opportunity to see and hear the candidates in their own words, rather than quick sound bites on TV or just reading a synopsis in the next day’s newspaper.

As you can imagine, the logistics involved in making this all work have been a significant challenge, given we both were pretty much at the mercy of the candidates’ schedulers. While we tried to accommodate the students by shooting for the targeted 10:45 a.m. start time, that didn’t happen very often. We ended up starting some sessions as early as 9 a.m. (Delaware Sen. Joe Biden) and as late as 3 p.m. (Arizona Sen. John McCain), thanks to the flexibility and dedication of Jim and his students.

But the biggest logistical challenge by far was our most recent session this past Monday at 9:30 a.m. with former Republican Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts. Everything was in place until we started to hear murmurings a few days beforehand of a possible Sunday night/Monday morning snowstorm.

While I spent most of the weekend in panic mode, my fears were put somewhat at ease early Sunday morning when I received the following e-mail from Jim at 8:24 a.m.: "I have enough students willing to come in if there is a school cancellation to capture the Romney interview on tape. Since the students offered to do this and I didn’t have to ask them, it’s a good bet that they will show up."

Yes, you read the right. The students had actually volunteered to come into school on a snow day in order to make our Romney interview possible.

While I thanked them all that morning, I’d like to publicly acknowledge them here as well for their outstanding dedication to our project: Alex Vitale (North), producer/floor manager; John Weathers (North), director; Janis Deedy (North), assistant director; Ryan Paquin (North), audio engineer; James Dodson (South), graphics; Korey O’Brien (South), Camera 1; and Kendra McDonald (South), Camera 2.

By and large, we’ve heard nothing but positive things from the candidates about what has been a rather unique experience for them as well — being interviewed by members of a newspaper editorial board in a high school TV studio operated by students. I wouldn’t be surprised if they enjoyed mingling with the students after the event more than dealing with us during the interview.

On that score, the Biden campaign even mentioned the students in a campaign e-mail that summarized the candidate’s recent visit to the state:

"On Thursday, Senator Biden began the day by meeting with the Nashua Telegraph’s Editorial Board hosted by Nashua South High School … We would also like to thank Nashua South High School for hosting the meeting in their recording studio. The students were fantastic."

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

Nick Pappas is editorial page editor at The Telegraph. He can be reached at 594-6505 or npappas@nashuatlegraph.com.