media

Here's a shocker - more young viewers watched new CNN show with Erin Burnett than watched Chris Matthews. To be fair... did Chris Matthews ever have a youth following? Last night she even reported on Occupy Wall Street with sunglasses on!

Her new CNN show OutFront show drew 535k in total viewers, which is up 11% from what John King USA averaged in that time slot last month.

More importantly, at least in TV land, she attracted 215,000 viewers in the key 25-54 demo which is up a whopping 48% from what the 7pm slow was averaging in September.

To put that in context, Burnett topped Chris Matthew's Hardball in the key demo by 14%.

Michelle Obama is more powerful than I thought.

First, I came across a Media Matters post highlighting yet another crazy piece of trash story from Fox News. This one claims that Michelle Obama gave "weird" relationship advice in her recent meeting with English schoolgirls. Fox used a relatively tame Daily Caller piece as an inspiration for the story, adding the "weird" language in their own headline:

This is the text from the Daily Caller story:

First lady Michelle Obama always believed her husband would be "useful," yet never expected him to land the most powerful job in the world.

"I always thought he would be useful, but I had no idea he was going to be president," the first lady told a group of schoolgirls gathered to hear her speak Wednesday at Christ Church College in Oxford, England.

Michelle Obama went on about the president, whom she met more than 20 years ago while working at Sidley & Austin, a corporate law firm in Chicago. The first lady was tasked with mentoring Barack Obama and their relationship blossomed.

[...]

"I knew he was a special person. And it had nothing to do with his education, it had nothing to do with potential," the first lady said of Barack Obama, who attended Harvard Law School and Columbia University. "It was those kind of values that made me think, you don't meet people like that often. And when you couple that with talent -- and he's cute."

Reflecting on her "useful" spouse, the first lady had some relationship suggestions for the young females in attendance, warning them to steer clear of negative influences.

"Reach for partners that make you better," Michelle Obama said. "Do not bring people in your life who weigh you down. And trust your instincts. Good relationships feel good, they feel right...It's with the people you surround yourselves with, and that's just as important as the school that you choose."

Hmmm... not finding anything that weird. In fact, it sounds like what I would hope any well-meaning, successful, normal adult would say.

After reading this nonsense, I just chalked it up to another instance of Fox being Fox. But then I remembered reading a USA Today story a couple days ago that might explain Fox's sudden assault (this story, as well as the ridiculous Common controversy) on Michelle Obama.

First lady Michelle Obama is holding steady with the support of two-thirds of voters in a new poll - and she's gaining ground among young people as she's starting to hit the campaign trail on behalf of her husband's re-election campaign.

A Marist Poll out today finds that 66% of registered voters have a favorable impression of the first lady compared with 17% who have an unfavorable impression. The rest said they were unsure.

[...]

The biggest gap is generational. Millennials (ages 18-30) are crazy about her. They give her an 84% approval rating. The numbers drop from there as people age. Gen Xers (ages 31-46) give her a 67% approval rating; Baby Boomers (ages 47-65) give her 62%; the Silent or Greatest Generation (over 65) gives her 59%.

Emphasis added.

There are probably political scientists out there who might argue that spouses don't have electoral value and that this doesn't really mean anything. But when her favorability is as high as it is, especially with young people, and with her being one of the few people speaking officially about the 2012 campaign, I don't think it's out of the realm of possibility that a Republican mouthpiece like Fox News might deliberately misrepresent stories to temper her appeal.

I start this post hoping that most of us can agree that contemporary political discourse is problematic. The oversized egos of television and radio commentators and news personalities, accompanied by the narcissistic and moralistic tone of most politicians, leaves us with lots of posturing and little change.

Michael Gerson, a former speechwriter in the Bush administration and a current columnist in the Washington Post, decided to wade into this topic in his latest piece. Gerson sees discourse breaking down into two parties: the Ugly Party and the Grown-Up Party. In differentiating the two, Gerson rightly attributes all dialogue which wishes death upon people or likens them to a disease to the Ugly Party. For instance, Ann Coulter's lamentation that the terrorists did not also hit the New York Times building, or that Mike Malloy, a radio talk show host, stating that he believed Glenn Beck should blow his brains out. I have no problem with Gerson's scolding here -- we need more of it.

I do have a problem with his alternative, however. Gerson explains the Grown-Up Party:

The alternative to the Ugly Party is the Grown-Up Party -- less edgy and less hip. It is sometimes depicted on the left and on the right as an all-powerful media establishment, stifling creativity, freedom and dissent. The Grown-Up Party, in my experience, is more like a seminar at the Aspen Institute -- presentation by David Broder, responses from E.J. Dionne Jr. and David Brooks -- on the electoral implications of the energy debate. I am more comfortable in this party for a few reasons: because it is more responsible, more reliable and less likely to wish its opponents would die.

Sounds nice, right? My problem is that Gerson's explanation of the Grown-Up Party is too regressive for my taste. If we are trying to engage youth in politics, especially optimistic Millennials, we certainly should be doing what we can to rid the political environment of divisive rhetoric (as well as produce a title less insulting to youth democrats -- little "d"). But we should not be doing it at the expense of access and opportunities for participation.

Gerson's "seminar" places the experts at the center of the discourse suggesting that they should be controlling this country's political discussion, not its citizens. Gerson anticipates this criticism, noting this approach's reputation as "stifling creativity, freedom and dissent." Unfortunately, Gerson does little to soothe these concerns.

While I appreciate Gerson's critique of the status quo and his call for a better political environment, I regret his admitted lack of creativity in constructing an alternative. This Grown Up Party, in throwing the proverbial baby (New Media) out with the proverbial bathwater (an indecent discourse), also squanders opportunities, to use Gerson's language. Today's youth are coming of age with heaps of learned technological experience, and while many online communities have extremists, just like offline communities do, the Internet can be used productively and responsibly and should not simply be dismissed.

I propose a hybrid of Gerson's approach and the status quo. Yes, our culture is poisonous, with dangerous rhetoric flowing into our discourse. The resulting animosity begets more nasty language and leads to personal attacks that immediately shut down productive policy discussion and the free exchange of thoughts and ideas. Instead of attacking New Media, perhaps we educate young adults. Using deliberation in high school classrooms, for example, teaches students civic knowledge, critical thinking, and communication skills. This pedagogy could replace the boring overhead projector and transparencies many of us experienced in social studies courses. Maybe we simultaneously empower young adults, ensuring they understand that politics is not merely a negative, episodic adventure, but an ongoing marathon in which they can easily participate.

Dualistic thinking is dangerous, and employing it in this context threatens our ability to fully capitalize on the opportunities present in our citizenship. We need healthy rhetoric in our political discourse, but we need it to accompany expanded participation in the conversation, not eschew it.

Matt Bai wrote an interesting piece in the Times last week, noting how far we've come in our various debates since the 1960s, while acknowledging that, in some ways, we have not come far at all. Bai used the controversies surrounding Rand Paul and Richard Blumenthal to make his case.

Why then, to quote the ubiquitous Bono, is our political debate so stuck in a moment it cannot get out of? In part, it is probably because so many of the Americans most engaged in politics — as well as those who run campaigns and comment endlessly on them — are old enough to remember Altamont. It is your classic self-fulfilling prophecy: the more the ’60s generation dominates the political discourse, the less that discourse engages younger voters, and the longer the boomers hold sway over our politics.

On a deeper level, though, this all probably has as much to do with our basic human tendency toward moral clarity. As much as conservatives may view the decade as the crucible of moral relativism and the beginning of a breakdown in established social order, there remains something powerfully attractive about the binary, simplistic nature of it all, the idea that one could easily distinguish whether he was for war or against, in favor of equality or opposed.

By contrast, war today seems more a question of degrees and limits, while equality seems less about the laws of the land than about disparities in economic and educational opportunities that are subtler and harder to address. The choices of our moment are not nearly so neat or so satisfying as they were a generation ago, which makes them less useful as a basis for one’s political identity, and harder to encapsulate in some 30-second spot or prime-time rant.

Emphasis is mine. I find myself agreeing with Bai's explanation, especially given my work with college students. Our students today are getting their bachelor's degree and I would wager that, the way we construct our educational system in this country, a significant number get out of it without having to think critically about issues. If I'm a student and I have followed external formulas guiding my behavior, never having this behavior challenged, I am not even aware that there is anything other than my cozy dualistic system from which I can choose (Harvard developmental psychologist Robert Kegan would say I am subject in my meaning-making capabilities). Of course a simplistic, yet disingenuous politics is going to thrive.

In order for us to challenge this lack of preparation we are offering our students, we must challenge the hegemonic structure dictating that campaigns or discussions on public affairs must run this way. Simultaneously, we must purge ourselves of the assumption that we must go to college to have a chance to learn this. These are big tasks; these notions unobtrusively penetrate our lives everyday, seducing us to believe that, because its the way things work, we must follow it. You go to college, get a four degree, and then work somewhere because you are deemed to be bright enough to do so and be a citizen. There's a code for it: it's "tradition." It's romanticized. The degree is money, we're taught. Yes, our realities are much more contextual than they used to be; our technology, while improving our lives and making them more efficient, gives us a tangential responsibility of learning supplemental skills to be able to cope with the effects of the improvements.

Yet, how many of these college degree-holding, former students come home from work and sit in front of their TVs, allowing the sonorous voices of Bill O'Reilly, Wolf Blitzer, and/(but most likely) or Keith Olbermann to fill their living rooms? Many, I'd be willing to bet. And it's because "we're tired." We've been thinking all day. We need someone to explain things to us, not help us understand anything better. And so when Blitzer's voice gets pitchy with excitement, indelicately discussing stories as complex as the history of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the opportunity to parse what he is saying, to explore it, to uncover it, comes and goes. "Why is this garbage on TV?," someone might ask. But given the way we tackle education in this country, we are all too often incapable of answering our own questions.

So when I read Matt Bai's piece last week, I couldn't help but get excited. A writer for one of the main cogs in this hegemonic structure takes notice of the primary problem -- it's a welcome event. Yet, until we have younger people willing to challenge the status quo of journalism and education in this country (and older ones courageous enough to assist), our external formulas will triumph.

37 local NPR and PBS affiliates will be receiving over $10 million in total funding in order to better cover local and regional news stories. The funding is intended to make up for a fledgling newspaper industry.

On Thursday, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting announced the creation of local journalism centers in five regions. NPR and PBS stations in each region will collaborate on covering key issues, including immigration, agribusiness, the economy and health care. They will jointly hire about 50 multimedia journalists.

[...]

The funding initially targets the Southwest, the Plains states, the upper Midwest, upstate New York and central Florida. Proposals also are being accepted from stations in the South and Northwest, and Harrison hopes to expand the effort.

It will involve 37 local stations, though at least 100 applied. To date, 13 radio stations, 13 joint ventures operating both radio and TV outlets, and one stand-alone TV station have signed on. Stations were selected on the basis of a business plan that included an outline for becoming self-sustaining within two years.

"The idea of pulling together radio and television for content that is broadcast and online this is going to be our template going forward," Harrison said.

The Corporation - already the single largest source of funding for NPR and PBS - will provide $7.5 million of the investment for the project, while the stations involved contribute $3 million.

Preparing public broadcasting to fill in for failing private media is a great move on behalf of American citizens. Though just part of a larger effort, providing Americans with substantive coverage of issues (as opposed to personality) is an important step in increasing civic engagement.

I was flying today and my ADD needed more than my iPod so I turned to the in-flight magazine where I found a piece by Spirit Magazine editorial director Jay Heinrichs titled Reverse Internships all about how older people have a lot to learn from young people. Also, given the White House's Jobs Summit, I thought a piece on jobs, internships, etc.. might be a good way to get the ball rolling.

The idea came from the writer's daughter who, it turns out, has picked up all sorts of skills having to do with, you guessed it, online media and marketing which has helped her have more of a grasp on how to better utilize the internet to distribute communications and messages. This, the editor decided, was marvelous, because magazines and traditional media have now become "old media."

His solution for any other older person still in the business world but still hasn't figured this out yet, is to begin with interns.

"Sure, kids have much to learn from the elders. In my own business of magazines, for instance, it's nearly impossible to qualify for an editorial job without at least one internship. This is true for most professions. Education only takes a kid so far; after that its a matter of learning by doing. . .

"Instead of hiring young people as interns at our offices, we older types should try interning with them. Kids simply do some things better. Anyone with a 12-year-old knows who solves the family computer problems. The next social trend, the new new tech thing: These are mostly the bailiwick of the young."

Heinrichs' terrific idea part two is to utilize technology to give more internship opportunities to young people through distance internships.

"What if we hired young whizzes as consultants and communicated with them via some youth-friendly technology? (my suggestion: Like the internet). Fly them in at the beginning and end the contract - which, because of the remote nature, could last as long as one year - or, better yet, fly to them. The kids benefit from the experience, and you get cheap work in a field you know nothing about. In other words, while students bear the title of intern, you're the real apprentice."

Condescension and unrealistic salary requirements aside, this is actually something I've been doing with one of my clients for the past year. Our client is in Oklahoma, a pretty rural state, and located in the city's capitol. This shouldn't prevent young people from being able to help out, intern, build their resume, and experience, and be advocates in their own home towns. The difference here is that my distance intern is in high school, not a college graduate.

Which brings me to the unrealistic salary requirements. With an unemployment rate twice the rate of the national average for 18-29 year olds, and the average debt load post-graduation over $20,000, the idea of working for nothing is a fantasy of Mr. Heinrichs' generation. Young people can't afford to work for free.

Further, these ideas aren't new. Newspapers across the country are crumbling with the emergency of new technologies and new media bringing people their news. Papers are clamoring for young people who can come in and introduce these technologies to save them, and the young people that are good at this can generally get a pretty good deal.

While, Mr. Heinrichs is right to emphasis the importance of internships, the usefulness of being an editorial director's intern is falling more into the era of the big box television, I would instead suggest turning to a mainstream blog for experience. Think Talking Points Memo, OpenLeft, Media Matters, etc.. That can get you both the new media experience as well as the connectivity to the blogosphere. Experience is essential, but it has to be in a field that is going places. For the older people who need these skills I think you should consider paying young people what they're worth.

In the work that we do as part of the progressive youth movement, vote drives aimed toward young people can easily take on a message like "vote for voting's sake." The result? A media and society that just assume youth are going to vote regardless of what is going on around them. It's a convenient dualism for the establishment: if youth don't vote, call them disengaged; if they do vote, it's due to either a hotshot candidate, issues on the line directly impacting their lives, or because they're supposed to since everyone else is doing it. This is ignorant, though, and just as the world is much more complex than most two-way issues, the same goes with youth voting.

Let's now look at one of the two approaching gubernatorial elections.
New Jersey's race has been topsy-turvy. Incumbent Democratic governor Jon Corzine, hamstrung with a rough economic environment and voters increasingly unhappy with their state's corrupt reputation, trailed Republlican candidate Chris Christie from the start, though he has pulled even as of late given Christie's own problems.

Where do young voters come in? Let's use the New Jersey race as an example.

The New York Times published an article today titled, "Corzine Courts Obama Backers in All-Out Push." And yes, within the "Obama backers," the Times paints young voters as being the heart and soul of the group; it's great if they come through. But what if they don't?

We might be able to see a preview in the article. Check out this academic's view:

“If Corzine can activate the Obama surge vote in New Jersey, that would suggest that last year was more than just a flash, that it has staying power,” said Allan Lichtman, a history professor at American University. “It will show that Obama’s support was about more than just one candidate’s charismatic personality, and give him a chance to transform American politics.”

Did you get that? Only if young voters show up in New Jersey does "Yes We Can" mean anything. As if 2004 and 2006 didn't happen?? Perhaps, just maybe, Lichtman is missing something.

The article goes on:

The first-time voters are described by campaign operatives from both parties as more likely to be African-American, Latino and urban than the overall electorate. But the group also includes younger voters, so in addition to canvassing in places like Newark and Camden, Mr. Corzine’s campaign has obtained some voter data and contact information from Mr. Obama’s presidential campaign Web site, and is trying to reach them through online appeals and social networking.

“In 2005, Jon Corzine didn’t even have a Facebook page,” said Joseph Cryan, the state Democratic chairman. “But now, with the help of the president’s voter lists, we’ve got people following us on Twitter, and we are reaching out to them in ways we hadn’t ever done before.”

With turnout unlikely to exceed 2.5 million on Tuesday, Corzine officials estimate that if they draw only a quarter of first-time Obama voters to the polls, they could gain the edge they need.

But even the governor’s most ardent supporters acknowledge that selling Mr. Corzine to Obama admirers has not been easy. On the surface, it would be hard to imagine two political figures more different. Mr. Obama is charismatic, eloquent and stylish, while Mr. Corzine is self-effacing, and an often meandering public speaker. And more significant, Mr. Corzine bears the burden of the state’s gloomy economy and reputation for corruption.

News flash to the Corzine campaign: for as much as the Millennial generation likes to be online, likes to post pictures wearing scandalous Halloween costumes on Facebook, likes to watch funny videos on YouTube, and likes to organize political events and/or service projects, we need to be talked to in order to get our vote.

Yes, Barack Obama's organization did a great job in the campaign at connecting with us on social networks like Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, and a host of others. But he also talked about our issues, and his team made sure we were seeing friendly faces in addition to friend requests and emails. His style matched ours, and the issues he discussed resonated with us. Yes, he asked us to vote for him, but he also asked us to give something back, to get involved, and reminded us that there's got to be a place at the table for us if this country is to take steps forward in the 21st Century.

But Corzine's campaign is willing to settle for a certain number of youth (not suggesting that Obama's camp didn't have their targets in 2008, but they respected us enough to avoid coming out and saying it). This sends a perception that the youth are just the bloc the governor needs to retain power, nothing more. Why? Because if the governor was actually interested in what the youth of New Jersey had to offer, or what they might want to see in his platform or next term, he wouldn't be clinging to Obama.

Yes, it's important to have a Democratic governor in New Jersey, but it's also important for campaigns to understand that youth don't vote to vote. They do so because they're asked for something beyond the vote. The vote isn't a literal, routine act. It's pregnant with significance. It signifies that we see a piece of ourselves in the candidate, that we believe that person will make decisions with our best interests in mind. Part of that is accomplished when people our age support and defend the candidate to us.

You can't buy that. You can't get that feeling from young voters unless you try. And you don't try by spamming their Facebook accounts a week or so before Election Day.

So let's turn to this: say the youth, because the Corzine folks rarely engaged us, don't turn out and the media lambastes them for only voting for personality (codeword for Obama). What is our plan? How do we respond?

Unfortunately, given the lack of funding for many progressive youth organizations, the communications efforts aren't there. By no means am I an expert in progressive youth infrastructure, but I do want to raise awareness of this. Because I have a feeling that the Corzine campaign's inability to engage youth on a peer-to-peer level is going to have some rough consequences, I believe we're going to be facing the "youth are disengaged" meme that will affect our preparations for 2010 and 2012. What are we going to do?

Frank Rich comments in his most recent column on the "lazy journalism" I tried to describe last week. He does a much better job than I did.

That’s why the past week’s debate about whether there could ever again be a father-figure anchor with Cronkite’s everyman looks and sonorous delivery is an escapist parlor game. What matters is content, not style. The real question is this: How many of those with similarly exalted perches in the news media today — and those perches, however diminished, still do exist in the multichannel digital age — will speak truth to power when the country is on the line? This journalistic responsibility cannot be outsourced to Comedy Central and Jon Stewart.

Moving as it may be to repeatedly watch Cronkite’s famous on-camera reactions to J.F.K.’s death and the astronauts’ moon landing, those replays aren’t the story. It’s a given that an anchor might mist up during a national tragedy and cheer a national triumph. The real test is how a journalist responds when people in high places are doing low deeds out of camera view and getting away with it. Vietnam and Watergate, not Kennedy and Neil Armstrong, are what made Cronkite Cronkite.

The main problem I had with David Gregory's email last week was that he was trying to be a friend to Governor Sanford and the staffer(s) at the expense of what he is actually paid to do. And if David Gregory (or Jake Tapper or any other inside-the-beltway journalist) can't be tough when a governor's steamy sex secrets are exposed, what are the chances he'd speak truth to power when presented with more substantive tests? Not good.

When I read Craigs Blog last weekend, I'll admit I was surprised and shocked. I jokingly tell people that every Sunday I attend the Church of Meet The Press, and for years referred to Tim Russert as Rev. for that very reason. To have David Gregory turn into just another spin sucking reporter broke my heart.

But then today, something else happened.

Let me begin with this. There is a great blog out of DC called EricaAmerica written by Erica Anderson, a young journalist who asks tough questions and demands answers. Erica was one of the MTV Street Team reporters during the 2008 Election. MTV chose to do a youth journalism program partnering with the AP and various other news agencies to report from every state in the country and Washington DC about what young people thought about the election.

Erica was the DC reporter. Since the election she's continued writing her blog about what's going on in DC and how it relates to the general whole of politics as she sees it. This includes pieces on Iranian protests, Don't Ask Don't Tell, the Tiller Murder, and all sorts of political issues from a front row seat at our nation's capitol.

Her best is a series of interviews and questions with Helen Thomas, the famed White House reporter who sat in the press room and asked former President Bush all of the questions no one else would ask.

But if Erica's latest blog is any indication, her recent hiatus might be a prolonged after the death of real journalism.

"The fate of journalism scares me. And it feels impossible, without giving up absolutely everything, including a personal life, to seek original content in my spare time, not just spin what’s already been spun. I think you all, the people who visit my blog, deserve some original stories. Not more GD spin."

And she's right. Outside of the major papers or news services we've turned into an country where we want our news pre-digested to fit our political persuasion. Whether Faux or Olberman our news comes with the talking points allocated by their respective sides. The rest is just a bunch of old white men who try and make jokes to convey their opinions while flashy graphics splay across the screen.

The best journalism comes not from these highly paid Larry Kings of the world with their five ex-wives or perfectly quaffed hair, but from the newspapers or bloggers who give up their lives and sometimes salaries to follow a lead.

Erica tells it best

"I was at a happy hour with a bunch of people who worked at ABC, NBC, CNN, etc. A senior White House producer from CNN asked me about Helen [Thomas]. I answered by asking her why people in the Press Corp didn’t follow up on Helen’s questions, the ones that were so OBVIOUS, like, Mr. President, are you certain Iraq has WMD? Why do intelligence reports contradict? Do we torture? You know, the basics.

The CNN Producer’s answer? “She makes us all uncomfortable.”

Uncomfortable? What a waste of a press pass. Someone who seeks the truth makes the Press Corp “uncomfortable.”

As young people begin college journalism programs I wonder how they feel about their ability to find jobs. Are they taught to strive for the on-camera personality or do they look for the job that lets them tell a story? Or ask the hard questions like Helen Thomas?

When my cousin had just moved to Washington DC to work for the Associated Press I went to visit her and we watched All the President's Men. I was probably 13 and it was my first time seeing it, but I remember she told me that the story made her want to be a journalist.

But does that kind of journalism exist anymore? And for those with whom it does - can they still get paid doing it? Or, like Erica, do they have to have a day job at the same time with journalism simply as a hobby?

I'll write a regular youth blog tomorrow, but I wanted to highlight Erica as being indicative of a profession I fear is being devalued and diminished right along with the other young people just like her. She talks about the too frequent accusation that the internet is forcing journalism into a by-gone occupation. It isn't the internet that is the source of the problem, its just sloppy bad journalism. Too many half ass producers and reporters feeling "uncomfortable" to hold someone accountable. Too afraid to ask the hard questions. Bloggers aren't scared - that's why people read them.

"Internet and technology will make journalism better off. More informed. More conscious. More like Helen."

Even if it isn't the end of an Erica, it might be the end of an era. I join her in hoping the future of real true journalism doesn't fall to people who refuse to do their jobs because it makes them "uncomfortable."

Journalism today scares me. I’ll tell you why.

Our generation is investing our time and effort reinvigorating our nation’s civic life. Millennials are rising through the ranks of American society at a time when our team-oriented, pragmatic approach is necessary to successfully combat the problems confronting the U.S. Contrary to our Boomer parents, our activism is inside-out in nature, not outside-in. The way we make change is to infiltrate institutions and transform them from within. This form of activism requires a generation that pays attention to current events, one that leans toward political engagement as opposed to apathy. The political world saw our impact in the 2004 election, as Millennials were the only age group to vote for John Kerry, and it felt it in 2008, with Millennials favoring Barack Obama over John McCain by a 2-1 margin, and providing Obama with most of his margin of victory. While we still have a ways to go in convincing our political parties and the government to recruit more Millennials for positions with decision-making power, I don’t think many would argue that our generation is well on its way to Howe and Strauss’s vision of the generational powerhouse prophesied in Millennials Rising.

What’s surprising to me is that we have made such progress in the face of awful journalism. The tribute to Walter Cronkite following his recent death is appropriate and ironic. The media, dubbed “The Fourth Estate,” wax poetic on Cronkite’s integrity and objectivity, while epically failing to meet these same standards today. More ironic is that examples of these failures were released to the public this week when The Charleston Post and Courier secured and published e-mails between South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford’s staffers and the leading political journalists of mainstream news outlets. One such example is David Gregory, NBC’s moderator of Meet the Press. TPM Muckraker outlined a particularly concerning exchange taking place between Gregory and Sanford’s then-press secretary, Joel Sawyer.

Gregory's first email to Sawyer was sent at 12:24 p.m. on Wednesday June 24 -- that is, after Sanford had admitted to The State that he had actually been in Argentina, but before the famed stream-of-consciousness press conference where he admitted to an affair. Gregory wrote:

Hey Joel ...
Left you a message. Wanted you to hear directly from me that I want to have the Gov on Sunday on Meet The Press. I think it's exactly the right forum to answer the questions about his trip as well as giving him a platform to discuss the economy/stimulus and the future of the party. You know he will get a fair shake from me and coming on MTP puts all of this to rest.
Let's talk when you can.

Gregory left two different phone numbers.

After the press conference, Sawyer replied:

David --
Thank you very much for taking the time to personally reach out to us. For the time being, we're just going to let what the governor said today stand on its own. If we do some interviews in the future, I'll let you know as soon as possible.

Gregory followed up quickly: "You aren't doing anything at all this week...no other intvus anywhere?" Sawyer replied that they weren't.
Gregory gave it one last shot:

Look, you guys have a lot of pitches .. I get it and I know this is a tough situation ... Let me just say this is the place to have a wider conversation with some context about not just the personal but also the future for him and the party ... This situation only exacerbates the issue of how the GOP recovers when another national leader suffers a setback like this. So coming on Meet The Press allows you to frame the conversation how you really want to...and then move on. You can see (sic) you have done your interview and then move on. Consider it.

Sawyer did not respond.

This exchange is a perfect example of the difference between Cronkite’s journalism skills – the skills we need the media to have today – versus the lacking skill of modern journalists like Gregory. Yes, it’s a business. But we need it to be a noble business, one that uncovers answers and information with the public’s interest at heart. In Gregory’s example, as moderator of MTP, shouldn’t he be framing the conversation? Gregory’s apparent willingness to allow any guest to dictate the direction of the interview is seriously problematic.

If Millennials want to continue to build and reinvigorate our civic institutions for the Twenty-First Century, I suggest we start with the media. Luckily we already have Scoop44 on board, a youth-run media outlet dedicating to chronicling the Obama administration from a youth perspective. Scoop44’s about page frequently describes itself as energetic, perhaps needling the traditional media’s penchant for lazy reporting. We also have a friend in Luke Russert at NBC, following in his dad's footsteps and asking questions about youth issues like the impact of the economy and unemployment on our generation. But in order for us to make the largest mark on society, Millennials need more from today's journalists.

Any thoughts on the state of the media and its relationship with Millennials as we continue to gain more power across the nation?