Youth Media Roundup; Obama's Secrets Revealed

Here's the latest media stories on the youth vote:

• The New York Times ran a big piece in Sunday's paper that in part praised young voters for their participation and influence on the election. It also asked the question "what next?" That's something I'm seeing a lot more of in the second wave of youth vote stories.
• Further examples of that new, "what next/will they stay involved" narrative can be found in these stories from Medill Reports and San Jose Mercury News.
• Another story by the Mercury News looks at how the governing philosophy favored by Millennials influenced their voting habit in this election.
• Luke Russert has a more optimistic - and data-driven - look at the youth turnout phenomenon.
• Campus Politico notes that campus activists are now turning their eyes towards issue advocacy and 2009 races.
• The Arizona Republic reports that the shifting partisan loyalties of the Millennials is putting the GOP in a tough spot.
• The Associated Press says that "young voters have clout, and they used it."
• At WireTap, Biko Baker, the Executive Director of the League of Young Voters, write about how he came to "drink the Obama Kool Aid," and encourages young activists not to let up now that Obama is in office.

If you've read this far, you are obviously looking to find the secret of Obama's success. That claim might be a little overblown, but you should definitely check out these two pieces:

• Ari Melber writes about Obama's email list and calls it "the big stick Obama will carry to Washington."

  Obama's list now tops a whopping ten million people, according to today's Washington Post.

  The article does not directly attribute that figure to anyone. The same paragraph cites "senior aides," however, to report that the list is so financially valuable that it was "briefly offered" as loan "collateral during a cash-flow crunch." A source in a position to know also told me that the email list has reached eleven million people. [...]

  It enables direct communication at a remarkable scale. The next President can instantly address 16 percent of his national supporters, based on the popular vote. To put it another way, the list dwarfs the audience of all the nightly cable news shows combined.

• At TechPresident, Gene Koo looks at how technology beefed up the Obama ground game - particularly in the final week - and takes a guess at how these technologies will transform the ground game in 2010 or 2012.