The Nation has announced their newest topical page, StudentNation, that focuses on issues affecting young Americans and college students. The page also features information about internship opportunities, student conferences, and their student writing contest.

Below is the announcement email:

Dear Nation Reader,

Despite unkind media impressions about youth apathy, there are countless examples of engaged young people creatively combating racism, sexism, economic injustice, climate change, draconian social policies and religious intolerance.

StudentNation chronicles these projects in a continually-updated group blog written by students and young writers taking on a vast range of issues and reporting projects.

Check it out today for an insider’s look into the world of youth activism, and please tell any young people you may know about the writing opportunities for young journalists and activists we’re providing through StudentNation.

See you online!

All the best,

Peter Rothberg
Associate Publisher

While it is good that students are getting this kind of focus, there is still a lack of writing and resources on non-college youth. Hopefully we will see more outlets follow suit and even expand to young adult issues beyond the student demographic.

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I get asked a lot about where I find the links I clip to every day. Inspired by The Atlantic’s What I Read feature, I decided to post my own.

The main source for my clips is Google Reader, where I subscribe to around 500 active feeds. The feeds are triaged into folders based on the likelihood that they will contain something clipworthy and by topic. I use the ‘J’ and ‘K’ keyboard shortcuts to quickly move through the posts until I see a relevant headline.

Some of my must read sources are Future Majority, obviously, Campus Progress, CIRCLE, Drum Major Institute, e.politics, Higher Ed Watch, Inside Higher Ed, Millennial Makeover, Navarrow Wright, New Policy Institute, New Geography, Peter Levine, Pew Research, Rock the Vote, National Journal’s Tech Daily Dose, TechPresident, The Bivings Report, and ThinkProgress. The spreadsheet of all of my feeds is published as a Google Doc if you want to check them all out.

On my second laptop I have a number of news sites bookmarked so I can scan the homepages.

I have two folders for news proper, including at least one newspaper from every state and major city and the national outlets. I have a folder for international news sources like Al Jazeera English, Le Monde Diplomatique, and EuroNews. Other folders are for youth organizations, think tanks, official government sources, entertainment news sites, polling firms, literary journals, and tech sites. I also have aggregation sites like Google Fast Flip, Newsmap, popurls, and Alltop.

I am also on a number of email lists, including Politico’s Playbook and Morning Money, Council on Foreign Relations Daily Brief, The Hill’s E-news, Washington Post Morning Fix, McClatchy Washington Bureau Newsletter, CNN Political Ticker, Gallup News, Rasmussen Reports, Morning Joe’s Morning Minutes, Nonprofit Quarterly Newswire, ECA Today, Foreign Policy Daily Brief, Netted, the NY Times and Washington Post lists, and the press lists for a number of federal agencies. I also use Summify and Trove to round up stuff that has been shared on social media.

That, combined with Twitter, Facebook, and Google+, is where the articles from my clips lists come from.

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PBS Kids Creative Director Chris Bishop created this great infographic illustrating the importance of PBS.

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From the release for Gallup’s new poll about public opinion of the health care law (emphasis mine):

Americans are most likely to say the healthcare law passed earlier this year goes too far (42%), while 29% say it does not go far enough and 20% say it is about right. Those who believe the law goes too far tend to favor repealing it and passing a new bill as opposed to scaling back the existing bill or repealing the law and not passing new legislation in its place.

The summaries of these polls have been continually framed in a way that gives the impression that the American people are against health care reform. Since the question splits the supporters of health care reform into two responses, while all detractors fall into one, the summary presents the detractor response as “most likely.” What the poll is really saying is that most Americans either support the new law or want a stronger one 49-42%. The presentation of the results in these summaries is helping fuel the negative narrative surrounding health care reform.

On another note, health care is two words. Go back to school, Gallup.

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On his September 29th show David Letterman did a top 10 list about young voters, which is pretty much the top 10 stereotypes about American youth. Clip and list below.

10. Refer to himself as the Chillaxer-in-Chief
9. Limit speeches to 140 characters or less
8. Broadcast all Oval Office addresses in 3D
7. Replace Rahm Emanuel with a hunky, brooding vampire
6. Trade in Air Force One for rocket-powered Obama-cycle
5. Answer tough questions with “Whatevs”
4. Change name to Bajustin Obieber
3. Refer to his abdominal muscles as “The Administration”
2. Check into rehab, go to prison, check back into rehab, go back to prison, check back into rehab
1. Join Team Coco

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If you have been watching any news over the last month or two there is probably a word that you have been hearing every 10 minutes. It’s also a word that you probably did not hear all that often in the past. The word that I refer to is “dithering.”

I used Google Trends to visualize the effect that this sparsely-used word’s inclusion in the GOP talking points had on its popularity.

“Dithering” was hardly used until late in 2009. Let’s look at the last few months.

At the end of October “dithering” spikes when former Vice President Cheney kicked off the talking point buzz-word bonanza, only to be followed by nearly every GOP spokesperson, elected official, candidate, and all the media outlets.

The GOP noise machine is as strong as ever. If they were half as good at stimulating the economy as they are at stimulating the usage of dormant verbs, we wouldn’t be in a recession right now.

Now I should probably stop dithering and get ready for the YDA National Conference in Orlando this weekend.

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A post today from the CNN Political Ticker Blog had the headline “DNC falls short of RNC in September cash haul.”

The Democratic National Committee raised just over $8 million last month, according to a party source – a total that would put the DNC behind the Republican National Committee for the month, which reported earlier Tuesday that they brought in $8.74 million in September.

At this point the headline is accurate, though with $740 thousand being the difference falls short sounds a little worse than if it was “RNC edges out DNC in September.”

But the for the entire third quarter of the year, the DNC edged out the RNC by around $1.3 million, the first time the Democratic Party has topped the GOP in fundraising for a quarter since the spring of 2004.

Wait a second, the headline is about the RNC raising more money in September, but the DNC outraised the RNC for the quarter, and it’s the first time in 5 years? Their headline isn’t incorrect, but it’s not the actual story. Plus, notice how they use the lighter “edged” when talking about the DNC outraising the RNC by $1.3 million.

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It was bound to happen sooner or later. Some CNBC apologist would try to defend the network against Jon Stewart and get it all wrong. It turns out that person is Mike Hegedus on Huffington Post today. Hegedus is a former CNBC correspondent, known for features about such topics as pink Jeeps and Gluten-free cookies.

Let’s start from the beginning.

Jon Stewart began calling out CNBC after Rick Santelli called average people being hurt by the financial crisis “losers.”

Jim Cramer was one of the CNBC personalities that Stewart called out on the show. It started to become a Cramer/Stewart rivalry when Cramer went on a whirlwind media tour defending himself, with the help of Joe “Doucheborough.”

The conflict culminated with Cramer’s appearance last night on The Daily Show, where Stewart by most accounts devastated him as Cramer whimpered at the desk.

Which now brings us to Mike Hegedus’ column today in the Huffington Post, entitled “Jon, You’re Wrong. It is a Game, and You’re a Player!”

Now, Hegedus’ article isn’t entirely off-base, but his characterization of Jon Stewart, the impact on CNBC, and his defense of CNBC are.

Where they go wrong is when they both actually believe their own publicity. Verbal helium is a dangerous thing. Stewart is a comic turned the ‘white knight’ of journalism, holding the feet of hemming and hawing politicos to The Daily Show fire. Pointing out their foibles, keeping an eye on the world for the rest us. A voice of eternal reason, the Diogenes of his generation.

Cramer on the other hand is a stock picking “guru.” In his veins beats the pulse of the Street. He’s been there, done that, become a rich man by using his wits to stay ahead of the curve, and he, just like Stewart, is there to make sure that we, the unwashed, don’t get taken,

Too late. We’ve been taken by the both of them, and of course it’s our own fault.

Do you want to know why people see Jon Stewart as the “white knight of journalism?” Because the journalists for the most part aren’t doing journalism. Jon Stewart is a guy who started a comedy news show who began calling out a lot of people in the mainstream media because he was frustrated that they weren’t doing their jobs. He doesn’t want to be a journalist, and he highlights how sad it is that he has to be seen as one. He flat out admits he runs a comedy show, that it isn’t going to be fair, and that’s what it is. He is on Comedy Central, not CNN, CNBC, or any other “news” organization. Stewart did not want to become Edward R. Murrow, despite the fact that he has done so brilliantly.

[Cramer] did not make his millions by watching or appearing on TV. He made it by working way too hard and long in the pits of the financial world — learning, studying, losing and winning. It cost him a lot (his hair and at times his health). What he is now is an entertainer, someone who can make an otherwise marginally interesting subject at least watchable. As luck would have it he’s also become popular, or as popular as someone on CNBC can be. And there in lies the problem. “Popular” is not something ordinarily associated with a business channel, and once CNBC, which had wandered in the desert of marginal cable stations for way too long, got a long drink of popularity thanks to Cramer, well, before you know it Jim is being rolled out as a ‘”expert” on Today, Nightly and anything else NBC owns.

Wait a second. Hegedus starts the paragraph essentially laying out why Jim Cramer would be an expert on the financial system, but says that the problem is that Cramer became popular and so was rolled out as an “expert.” Despite the contradiction, this is making Jon Stewart’s point, illustrated by the promo for Cramer’s show, Mad Money, with the tagline “In Cramer We Trust.”

[Stewart]‘s right, the economic issues we all face are not a game, but his show is. And they both played it. Cramer and CNBC have never had this much publicity. And while they both come out of it with a slight odor, little is likely to change. There’s nothing like the stink of notoriety. And the same goes for Stewart — how many more folks watched his show because he had Cramer on? How much more polished is his white knight “armour” now that he’s “slain” the evil Booyah? You think that was part of the plan?

Hegedus has apparently forgotten what happened with CNN’s Crossfire after a similar situation with Stewart. All publicity is good publicity doesn’t apply to a lot of people, especially politicians, experts, and journalists. The CNBC brand has taken a pretty big hit, and trust is at a low. It’s true that this probably boosted Stewart, especially since the American public has been hungry for someone, anyone, to do what Stewart did. The sad thing, and Stewart admits this, is that it had to happen on a comedy show.

The unfortunate piece of this is that Jim Cramer isn’t all of CNBC. Whatever aroma is attached to him will seep now onto the other hard working folks at the network who get up early and stay late to report on the actual financial happenings of the day. The fact that they don’t have the resources available to them to uncover the shenanigans that Stewart keeps harping about is not their fault. It’s a problem faced by all of journalism and something to be discussed at length at some other time.

Has Mike Hegedus even been paying attention to this whole thing? Jon Stewart attacked CNBC as a whole, Cramer just happened to be the one that engaged back. This wasn’t a Stewart/Cramer feud, this was an excoriation of a network that advertises itself as something that it is not and seems to be more in line with the CEOs and day traders than with the average Americans who are looking for advice on their financial security.

And stop with this “we don’t have enough resources” crap. This is an existential question about what CNBC is and what it is supposed to be. Here is Stewart on the subject:

It’s very easy to get on this after the fact. The measure of the network, and the measure of mess. CNBC could act as—No one is asking them to be a regulatory agency, but can’t—but whose side are they on? It feels like they have to reconcile as their audience the Wall Street traders that are doing this for constant profit on a day-to-day for short term. These guys companies were on a Sherman’s March through their companies financed by our 401ks and all the incentives of their companies were for short term profit. And they burned the f—ing house down with our money and walked away rich as hell and you guys knew that that was going on.

This is a question about CNBC actually doing financial reporting and the resources argument is just an excuse. When a CEO makes a statement to a CNBC reporter they should check to see if they are telling the truth, not just trusting them at the word and sounding hurt and astounded when it turns out they lied. When you have a network of ‘experts’ on finance that were aware of the practices that led to our current economic situation, didn’t they have the responsibility to report that? They argue that they thought the market was going to grow forever. First, it never has and never will. Second, how about the network just reports on what is happening and let the viewer make their own decision about it. That is the problem with the financial networks. There is a level of information asymmetry between correspondent and viewer, yet instead of giving the viewers the source information, they just analyze and make predictions based on their interpretations of that information and ask us to trust them.

And Jon Stewart is not a journalist. He’s a civically engaged entertainer, who apparently as frustrated as the rest of us with the economy went looking for someone to hammer. My suggestion Jon is next time find a bigger nail.

There are two things wrong with this closing statement. First, Stewart took on the entire business news industry. That is a pretty damn big nail that nobody has even attempted to take their hammer to. Second, it isn’t Jon Stewart’s responsibility to find bigger nails, it is the reporters’. People came after Stewart for this in 2004 over the Crossfire situation and are doing it again now. Like Stewart says, he runs a comedy show. If ‘real’ journalists would start doing their damn jobs and hammer some nails of their own without whining about there not being enough Home Depots nearby, Stewart wouldn’t have to do it all by himself. He shouldn’t have to do it at all.

I want to end with a few paragraphs from Andrew Sullivan’s take, which has been my favorite so far:

I watched the Daily Show with growing shock last night. Did you expect that? I expected a jolly and ultimately congenial discussion, after some banter. What Cramer walked into was an ambush of anger. He crumbled from the beginning. From then on, with the almost cruel broadcasting of his earlier glorifying of financial high-jinks, you almost had to look away. This was, in my view, a real cultural moment. It was a storming of the Bastille. It was, as Fallows notes, journalism.

Now, I know Jim Cramer a little. The reason he crumbled last night, I think, is because deep down, he knows Stewart’s right. He isn’t that television clown all the way down. And deeper down, he knows it’s not all a game – not now they’ve run off with grandpa’s retirement money.

It’s not enough any more, guys, to make fantastic errors and then to carry on authoritatively as if nothing just happened. You will be called on it. In some ways, the blogosphere is to MSM punditry what Stewart is to Cramer: an insistent and vulgar demand for some responsibility, some moral and ethical accountabilty for previous decisions and pronouncements.

It’s not a game.

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Matthew Kaminski of the Wall Street Journal wrote a column comparing the difficulties faced in governing by Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick to potential difficulties for Sen. Obama if elected President.

His argument is that “The Axelrod Method,” a campaign based on hope, change, and a candidate’s inspiring personal story, makes it difficult to “turn an autobiographical, pseudo-postideological campaign into a mandate for governing.”

Gov. Patrick’s campaign was orchestrated by David Axelrod and David Plouffe, the same team currently running Obama’s operation. Patrick won his election despite overwhelming odds based on the success of “The Axelrod Method.” However, as Kaminski likes to point out, Patrick was largely unable to deliver that change once in office due to entrenched interests and personalities that did not appreciate his reform message.

That crusading optimism, so critical to his election victory, fast bumped up against established Democratic interests such as the police unions and powerbrokers on Beacon Hill. They didn’t know Mr. Patrick, didn’t appreciate him jumping the queue to the governor’s chair, didn’t buy his reformist outsider message, and frankly liked things as they were. Great speeches or popular support were insufficient for Mr. Patrick to get his way.

Using Patrick as a case study for the entire country, Kaminski claims that “the ‘change’ president could be in for a rough ride with the Democratic warhorses on Capitol Hill.”

Here is the problem with Kaminski’s argument: Beacon Hill is not Capitol Hill.

Using a state such as Massachusetts, a Democratic stronghold where the fiercest political battles are in primaries instead of generals, is a fallacious comparison. We are talking about two completely different ball games. Very partisan states tend to have a very entrenched pecking order and electoral queue within their dominant parties. Since most candidates don’t have very stark policy or ideology differences, the system is about waiting your turn. When someone upsets the established order there is going to be a lot of resistance.

Now look at Sen. Obama and Capitol Hill. Sure, there are people in the Democratic Party that believe that Obama jumped ahead in line when it should have been Hillary Clinton’s, but the need to defeat John McCain and finally elect a Democrat to the White House after eight devastating years brought most of them home. In a state like Massachusetts, the real election tends to be the primary. In a campaign to become President of the United States, the general always matters.

Democratic Congressional leadership is supportive of Barack Obama. Many Democratic leaders credit him with restoring the Democratic brand that has been lacking for the last decade or more. It is hard to imagine a Democratic House and Senate shutting down everything Obama attempts to do in office the way Massachusetts Democratic leaders did to Governor Patrick.

Kaminski’s argument just doesn’t hold any water.

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