Kids 'R' Us
GINSBERG, EDWIN DIAMOND, CATHERINE DONALDSON-EVANS, LEAH
Television Panting After Youth By Edwin Diamond, Catherine Donaldson-Evans, and Leah Ginsberg ? ? "1—o you think Americans I lare ignorant and apa-1 S thetic about the election?" asks the...
...At the start of the campaign season, the cable network brought in Vassar grad and former New York Post reporter Jonathan Karl, 28, to be a political correspondent "specializing in covering the issues and concerns of Generation X," in the words of the CNN press release...
...For both the Republicans and Democrats, the 1996 youth drive was a lot like their "adult" campaign efforts: in the case of the GOP ill-conceived when not inept...
...In fact, the actual lives and voting records of young Americans explode the pop image of rebellious youth in ripped jeans and turned-backward baseball caps...
...The ambivalence about "what youth wants" is bound to continue as long as clueless news chief-tains—and out-of-it politicians, for that matter—think that the easiest way to appeal to young Americans is through tokenism and the dumbing down and tarting up of political coverage...
...Don't assume just because someone doesn't know who Boutros Boutros-Ghali is, that he or she is stupid," Chideya says in an interview...
...In 1992, a first-time, largely larky effort by Rock the Vote signed up some 350,000 new voters...
...ABC News hired 29-year-old Anderson Cooper as a correspondent with what he calls a "mandate" to tell stories other reporters weren't telling, focusing on voices not usually heard, all in a style not usually seen...
...MTV and Rock the Vote boasted strong brand-name recognition...
...Nancy Hochman provided additional reporting and research...
...he wore a turtle-neck rather than a tie...
...By 30, they've got 401(k) plans—58 percent of them in one (admittedly) upper-end group sampled last year by Roper Starch Worldwide...
...The report was substantive, informed, intelligent...
...In the 1980s, among the strongest supporters of Ronald Reagan and George Bush were younger voters (when they managed to show up at the polls...
...asks the pollster...
...This year, the volume was pumped up higher...
...That seems really cheesy to me," Cooper says...
...The electorate lost interest in the 1996 campaign early on...
...Yet the number of newly registered "youth voters" is not much higher than in 1992, despite a larger potential pool—some 3 million Americans have turned 18 each year in the mid-1990s—and the ease of registration under the new motor-voter law...
...Cooper says he doesn't want to be known only as "the Generation X reporter...
...this year, the figures were in the range of 60 to 70 million...
...The Rock the Vote registration party at the University of San Diego after the last Clinton-Dole debate underlined the ambivalence of the two parties about being too closely identified with the network of Beavis and Butt-Head...
...Students have to be interviewed, too...
...Rock the Vote directed its TV appeals not so much to young people's idealistic hopes as to a kind of naked generation-ism...
...In 1992, 90 million-plus viewers managed to dial in to the televised presidential and vice-presidential debates...
...While Rock the Vote radio and TV spots urged listeners to register and vote, a sleek MTV bus toured college campuses and suburban malls, blasting out rock numbers, distributing registration forms, telling crowds to "Choose or Lose...
...In a health-care piece, the younger uninsured audience ought to be covered...
...Edwin Diamond is a journalist and director of the News Study Group at NYU...
...Bob Dole and Newt Gingrich gave interviews to MTV political reporter Tabitha Soren...
...The series leads off with Mol-lie, 24...
...In 1992, with Gen X turnout slightly higher—43 percent of registered 18 to 34-year-olds voted, compared with around 40 percent in Reagan's two election campaigns—the "youth vote" tilted toward Clinton (Cool Bill, in shades, playing his sax on Arsenio Hall's show...
...Well, grab this...
...Convention ratings were down 40 percent...
...I think the worst way to try to appeal to a young audience is to say, 'Okay, this is your Gen X minute of the week,'" Karl avers...
...In other words, "youth" has tended to vote a lot like older Americans...
...I don't know, and I don't care," answers the citizen, slamming the door...
...The real downer is to be boring...
...Yes, only one in five Gen Xers may watch Dan or Tom or Peter, but they nevertheless glom on to "news" about politics from Letterman, Leno, and other late-night TV sages...
...On CNN, a Jonathan Karl report is likely to look like any other hard-news segment: establishing shot, background interviews, closer...
...it just may be "a different base of knowledge...
...CNN also signed up Kellyanne Fitzpatrick, 29, and Farai Chideya, 28, to offer commentary on CNN's "Inside Politics" program...
...While Chideya herself cited Pew Research Center figures showing how network news viewing has declined by almost one-third among 18 to 29-year-olds in the past year alone, she still found some good tidings hidden in the numbers...
...In the annals of apathy, however, the hotly desired "youth vote" deserves special recognition...
...Clinton skipped the fun, sending instead the Peter Pan-like George Stephanopoulos...
...Well before the 1996 campaign began, a number of news organizations independently came to the conclusion that they had to do something extra to entice young Americans into the media tent...
...The visual result is nothing if not arresting, but the overall meaning is a bit harder to read...
...Still, the sheer raw "youth numbers" were alluring...
...You don't let other people choose your music," went the rant on the emblematic Rock the Vote spot, "why let them choose your future...
...Once again, presumed grownups lost it—nonsensically thinking that any group as large and amorphous as Americans between the ages of 18 and 34 could have common political interests, even with the mediagenic "Gen X" designation...
...Donaldson-Evans and Ginsberg are members of the Group...
...Chideya, formerly at Newsweek, was hired by Time last month...
...The kids in the caps are more likely to be 15...
...Moreover, four out of five of these young people identified themselves as "independents," which means they're up for grabs every election cycle...
...Talk about reductive arguments: After all those years of Dad telling you to turn down the stereo, now you can fight back...
...Old joke, new reality...
...Chideya argues that the typical news story leaves out the under-30-year-olds: "If it's an education piece, teachers are interviewed, administrators are interviewed...
...Sheryl Crow and Robin Williams enlisted in the Rock the Vote ad campaign...
...When the campaign year began, both Democratic and Republican party operatives were mildly optimistic about the Election Day turnout from the "Generation X" cohort, even though voting is strongly correlated with age—the older the voter, the more likely a trip to the polls...
...The Choose or Lose bus was a cool statement in itself: interiors by Todd Oldham, images and sounds on the multiple video monitors and oversized speakers courtesy of Hootie and the Blowfish, Primitive Radio Gods, and Metallica...
...for the Democrats, a conscious diminuendo (don't rock anything this year...
...Like many of her generation," Cooper reports, "she's a college graduate, unemployed, and disillusioned...
...Cooper used a Hi-8 camera "to achieve a more intimate feel" in the interviews, then edited the film with MTV-style jump cuts and sharp angles, "like an old family movie...
...Ohhh . . . The most direct Gen X push was mounted at CNN...
...Her father, a math teacher, graduated from college in 1966 and had three job offers...
...As long as that lugubrious beat goes on, both the young and the old will tune out...
...The obsession with the youth vote finds a parallel in the obsession of TV executives with viewers who are 18 to 34 years old...
...I don't know any difference between telling a story to a young person and telling a story to an older person...
...Bob and Elizabeth Dole showed up with . . . Gerald Ford, now 83...
...Fitzpatrick is a Republican pollster...
...Mollie wants to teach elementary school, but, Cooper's voice-over explains, she's still looking after two years...
...At the end of a piece on the voting habits of twentysomething Seattle men and women, Karl did his stand-up with the Space Needle in the background...
...Unsurprisingly, those young voters who responded at all to campaign appeals leaned toward such middle-class issues as jobs, crime, and the cost of education...
...Young people have knowledge...
...Oh...
...But during the campaign ABC sent Cooper around the country to do a five-part series, "Across a Generation," about American twentysomethings who "face a future of uncertainty about identity, work, personal and political commitment...
...News stories on television can be shot to attract younger viewers—in a style that "looks and feels funkier"—without cutting back on substance...
...While the performers on MTV's videos party on, the network's sales department quietly hustles new advertising business with demographic charts claiming that almost half of the audience is in pajamas by 11, rises early, and earns $40,000 per...
...the 60 million Americans between 18 and 34 represent almost one in every four potential voters...
...In the editor's note announcing her appointment, Chideya said she hates the Gen X label but is resigned to using it "with a smirk in my voice...
...The home-movie feel and the artful lighting create a wave of empathy for Mollie, and then the viewer's disillusion sets in...
...By 20 they're shopping at J. Crew or Express...
...Chideya's first piece in Time tried to explain her generation's apparent lack of interest in politics and current events...
...At the beginning of the campaign year, an organization called Rock the Vote worked alongside the MTV network to get young Americans to register (see "Rock the Leftist Vote," The Weekly Standard, July 29, 1996...
...We're thinking how tough it is for Gen Xers until another Cooper voice-over informs us that, while "in many cities there's a shortage of teachers, Mollie wants a suburban school...
Vol. 2 • November 1996 • No. 9
