media narrative

I meant to highlight this on Friday when it came out but it got lost amidst my travels (which, btw, begin again tomorrow).

Young Voters Could Put Obama or Clinton in the White House

It's a really great all-around take on the youth vote that hits all the right points - increased turnout in previous cycles, the truth about Dean and young voters, the changing media narrative, etc.

My one pet peeve with it - and this is true for a lot of media reporting on the youth vote in the last two months - is that it mistakenly equates "celebrity" outreach by the candidate's children (be it Mitt's 5 sons, Chelsea, or the McCain 'bloguette') with real investment and connection with young voters. The narrative basically goes like this: candidate X is making an effort to connect to young voters as evidenced by the actions of son/daughter of candidate X.

In terms of the media narrative, I suppose that it's inevitable that events featuring the candidate's children get more coverage, particularly for youth vote stories. These stories have a natural news hook and they are easier to understand and report than a complicated field strategy. In some respects, it is a win for youth advocates whenever these stories are published, as they can provide positive media coverage for young voters in the campaign. Yet at times such 'celebrity' outreach can be merely a cloak covering up a lack of youth organizing within the campaign. Youth outreach isn't a media event, and campaigns should hire professional youth organizers, not punt the job to their children. And while I'm talking about the Presidential candidates here, this is a lesson that is just as true at the state and local level.

(To be clear, both Clinton and Obama DO have paid, professional youth staff).

With appearances by FM friend Karlo Barrios Marcelo:

Over at The Nation's Campaign Blog, Cora Courrier picks up on something important - the potential development of a new anti-youth narrative in the mainstream media:

Obama's young supporters are the main targets of the cult claim. Young people make up one of his main bastions of support, and the campaign has successfully marketed itself as the younger, fresher option. The flipside of this is that statements about Obama's supporters being cult-like are automatically pointed at young voters. Covering what it called the "Obama-mania backlash," CNN panned over a group of college-age Obama supporters as the question "Creepy?" appeared on the screen. John Dickerson asked in Slate whether there was "a natural limit to our enthusiasm for to this kind of sweeping phenomenon? Isn't the generation that Obama has so successfully courted usually the first to toss overhyped products, even the overhyped products with which they were at first so enthralled?"

This needs to be pushed back against. Hard. Not only is it the height of hypocrisy (apparently we're damned if we don't turnout, and damned when we show too much enthusiasm), but it's also just plain wrong.

As Jane notes in her post below, and as I describe in my book, young voters have been turning out in higher numbers since 2004. Higher youth turnout isn't only about Obama and it isn't a fad. Obama has merely tapped into a growing trend and a new progressive youth movement that has been developing since early 2003.

This is it. I'm officially out. See y'all in two weeks.

When I think about the youth vote narrative this year, and what 2008 means for young voter engagement, I have to confess that I am of a split mind.  It's not turnout that I'm worried about, it's how the campaigns are organizing young voters and what the outcome of the primaries will mean for how the media narrative will play out.

That might seem like a shallow concern at first, but you might remember that in 2004, despite a record increase in turnout and an overwhelming preference for Kerry over Bush, every single major media outlet in the country reported that "the youth vote didn't turn out."  By the time this narrative was corrected, it was too late.  The story was already out, the meme established.  At MFA, when we approached reporters and pitched them the real story about youth turnout, their response was "sorry, we've already told our youth vote story."

That had implications on funding, implications as to how seriously politicians, staffers, and consultants regarded young people as voters/constituents, and most of all it had an effect on how many young voters themselves regarded their generation.  Sometimes young voters themselves are the hardest people to convince that their generation is not apathetic and disengaged, and these stories gave millions of young voters the idea that - despite all our efforts - young people were worthless in politics.

Earlier today, Chris Bowers at MyDD posted his latest update on the 2008 horse race, declaring that, barring a loss in Iowa, the nomination appears to be Hillary's to lose.  Frankly, I worry about what that means for young voters.

This is a dicey topic, and I have no desire to see this devolve into a salad fight among the various supporters of Obama, Edwards or Hillary.  Maybe that's too much to ask, but I'm going to proceed with this diary anyway as I think it is worth thinking about and discussing.  

And so it begins, a summer of articles about campaign interns and graduates hopping on the campaign trail. Welcome to the summer youth vote narrative.

Liz Brown, Columbia University undergrad and daughter of Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH), has an amazingly comprehensive piece at the Huffington Post covering the (historical and current) role that our generation occupies in modern American politics. She's a little shy about coming down on either side of the fence as to the ultimate role we will play in coming years (you know where I stand), but the parts comparing Gen X to our generation are particularly insightful.

Read it.

And btw - there has been some incredible coverage of Millennials lately in the political media. This article, the National Review article, and that piece in the Democratic Strategist (my response here) come to mind as the best of breed. As does Judy Woodruff's blatant plagiarizing of Millennials's Rising during an appearance on Meet the Press to promote her "Generation Next" project. It was a cringe worthy appearance, but an important milestone in giving us street cred on the political beat.

Don't get me wrong, there's still an overabundance of shitty youth articles about how we don't vote, are obsessed with pop-culture ephemera, and rising turnout is a flash in the pan (surprisingly, these frequently appear in college newspapers - something I might blog about), but the number and quality of articles that seriously report on our significance and involvement in politics is increasing. The narrative continues to change.

It would be really useful to have someone do a media scan of young voter articles comparing pre and post election coverage. I would certainly like to know who the biggest offenders are in terms of lousy coverage, as well as get a sense of how, say, the top 10 media outlets are reporting on us.

No posting from me for 2 weeks, and now 4 in one day. I guess I'm recharged after the madness of early November and a bad head cold.

I'm about to head out the door to drive down to DC for RootsCamp, but I had to small items two post before I go.

I posted this morning about the DailyKos Community's hostility toward young voters, so it's only fair that i now direct you to a post by Chris Bowers that glowingly reviews the current and future potential of the Millenial Generation to fueling the progressive movement. Nothing new to folks that have been reading us here, but a great piece none the less, and really nice to see it front paged on one of the bigger progressive blogs.

Finally, let me offer some constructive criticism once again to the College Democrats. Don't help your opponents get media coverage, and don't ever repeat their frame.

You probably heard that the College Republicans launched another outrageous stunt last week, offering a "white's only" scholarship at Boston University. The College Democrats responded with a press release.

So the College Republicans received national media attention and sparked debate among young voters and older voters alike. The College Democrats' responded, and got some national coverage. But for every news hit CDA got, they only gave the college republicans even more coverage.

We got whupped again by the more media savvy Republicans.

In the past, I've written about the media narrative surrounding young voters. First, how the media screwed up big-time and perpetuated myths about young voter apathy, and then about how youth and civic participation orgs helped change that narrative.

I had a big plan to do a post-election media analysis of youth vote stories in the major newspapers and magazines. Only problem (if you can call it that), was that the stories around the youth vote this year are overwhelmingly positive. Josh notes one instance below, but there are many more.

The Washington Post lavished praise on youth turnout and the benefits it has and may continue to bestow on Democrats. Joe Garofoli (old faithful) pumped us up in the San Francisco Chronicle, the Chronicle of Higher Education wrote a great piece about creating a youth vote culture (something we're highly in favor of here).

Some of our own helped steer the media narrative as well. Billy Wimsatt of The League of Young Voters had a piece in Mother Jones, The Nation ran a piece (which linked to our "Wave" graphic) which got syndicated by Yahoo!, and some young social/political entrepreneurs wrote about youth impact in the Western States over at Tom Paine.

But what about the blogs? Kos wrote a (positive) short post about the youth impact on the elections, but the community is rarely receptive to the ideas and concerns of its younger members. In fact, from my experiences writing on the site and trying to drum up support for young voters and youth projects, I would say that the community opinion on young voters ranges from somewhere between non-committal to downright hostile.

This situation seems to be coming to something of a head. In a comments thread dedicated to nominating new front-page writers, there were a slew of commenters clamoring for younger voices on the site. And in the last three days there have been a number of diaries on the topic directly calling out the Kos community for its open hostility to young voters.