How America's Media is Failing the Young! David T.Z. Mindich...New Book

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How America's media is failing the young by David T. Z. Mindich

By Charles Hack
Special to the OPC

Following in the slip stream of the November 2 election, David T.Z. Mindich's new book, "Tuned Out: Why Americans Under 40 Don't Follow the News," should be compulsory reading for anyone trying to understand voting patterns that led to George Bush's eelection.
Mindich spoke to a decidedly white-haired audience in the comfortable lounge of Club Quarters Tuesday, November 9, but his topic was youth. He shed some light on youth turnout in the recent election and went on to prescribe medicine for one of journalism's chronic afflictions: its inability to reach a younger audience.

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Though his book primarily looks at why young people are turning their backs on political news, it also sheds light on how younger citizens might vote in the 2006 mid-term elections and beyond. Research found that the participation of younger people, defined as those aged 18-30, rose slightly in the election just passed. Of those who turned out, about 45 percent voted for President Bush and 54 percent voted for the Democrat, Sen. John Kerry.

This was sobering news for Democrats, who went to great lengths to reach out to younger voters, hoping that this age group would overwhelmingly vote Kerry and swing the election. Kerry's camp pinned a lot of hope on the Internet mobilization strategy that Howard Dean's primary campaign pioneered and which was championed in a book by Joe Trippi, Dean's campaign manager, "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised."

Mindich suggested none of this paid off for Democrats. “Young people didn't have the effect on the election that Kerry supporters had hoped,” said Mindich. Indeed, their failure to vote in significantly larger numbers this year reflects a deeper trend. While 30 years ago one half of college students read a newspaper every day, today it's closer to one in five. Mindich warns that lifelong patterns develop by the early 20s. If someone does not regularly read a newspaper by the age of 25 they are unlikely to pick the habit later in life.

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Mindich interviewed students across the U.S. and concluded that young people are tuning out, in part, because they simply have many more options today. Not only has the news been relegated to a smaller news hole, but the Internet, video gaming, multiplying cable and satellite channels all vie for audience attention. “News as a foot print of the media universe has really shrunk,” Mindich said.
One bright spot might be Internet news sites. The top four – CNN.com, MSNBC.com, Yahoo News and Google News -- have a combined daily readership far in excess of the top 25 U.S. newspapers combined. Demographic studies suggest that young people are far more likely to turn to the Internet for news than people above 45. This explains, in part, why big media companies have all devoted significant resources to developing their Internet news capabilities in recent years.(/i)
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