If you subscribe to Sirius Satellite Radio you can check out my interview on The Blog Bunker tomorrow (Friday,  May 23)  at 5:30 PM Eastern Time on Indie Talk Channel 110. I’ll mostly be talking about the youth vote and youth political participation.

P.S. You can tell how excited I am to get Photoshop back when I feel compelled to make a graphic for this.

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Saturday Night Live has launched its SNL Elections 2008 page, featuring videos from the show, e-cards, and more. Here is a list of some of the features:

• Political clips from past shows.
• Obama, Clinton, and McCain e-cards.
• Vote for all-tim favorite SNL Presidential candidate.
• Whack-a-pol game.
• Message boards with threads for each of the three remaining candidates.

Unfortunately the site does absolutely nothing to encourage people to vote. No register to vote button, nada.

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The cable news networks have been constantly reporting on head-to-head polls comparing Obama vs. McCain and Clinton vs. McCain and using these polls to determine electability. Questions about whether or not one candidate’s supporters will embrace the nominee have been all over television and the blogs. Despite all the hype that they cause, these head-to-head polls are pretty meaningless until the Democrats have a nominee.

The newest NBC/WSJ poll helps illustrate this:

Indeed, even though Democrats have an 18-point advantage over Republicans in a generic presidential ballot test (51-33 percent), this latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey shows Obama besting McCain by only three points (46-43 percent) and Clinton topping the Arizona senator by only one (45-44 percent).

While the argument can be made that John McCain has more appeal than other Republican candidates, it wouldn’t make that dramatic a difference. Here is what I think is happening. Clinton and Obama supporters, when they are polled, tell the pollster that they would not vote for their Democratic opponent against McCain. Why would they do this? To make their candidate look like a stronger choice for the Democrats in November. However, when they are asked the Democrat vs. Republican question they answer more honestly. Once we have a nominee I predict that the Democratic candidate’s numbers gain dramatically over McCain.

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Yesterday marked the release of Rockstar Games’ highly anticipated Grand Theft Auto IV, and once again the Baby Boomers are freaking out over the evil demons that will possess the souls of the unsuspecting innocents from the two most dangerous gateways to Hell: Xbox360 and PlayStation 3.

Now I don’t normally write on this subject, but I figure I’m not running for office or anything so I might as well. This uproar is just the latest in a long line of cultural panic in this country, from dangerous comic books in the 1950s to video games today. The argument is, of course, that these video games will turn children into stone-faced killers. Disputing the claims made by those under the spell of the culture of fear is the subject of the blog GamePolitics.com. Here are some of their posts:

• FBI Stats Don’t Support Claims That GTA is Cop Killer Game
• Expert: Grand Theft Auto is Not Why Kids Join Street Gangs
• As GTA IV Launches, Harvard Med School Author Advises Parents: Relax

Child psychologist Dr. Frank Gaskill argues against the video game fear-mongers, as do a number of other reputable authorities in the psychology and medical communities. As people now feel that the uproar of Elvis Presley’s dancing was silly, Millennials feel the same way about music and video games.

In Danny Goldberg’s Dispatches from the Culture Wars: How the Left Lost Teen Spirit he talks about the cultural disconnect between Baby Boomer politicians and the younger generations. The outrage shown by Boomer political figures like Hillary Clinton and Tipper Gore over music lyrics turned off a lot of young people. The Millennial generation has shown a preference for openness, freedom of speech and expression, and transparency. Unwarranted hysteria over video games and calls for censorship of the medium is unacceptable to those that have grown-up with and fully understand computer and video games.

While stirring up unwarranted fear and seeking draconian responses to the specter of youth poisoned by video games may earn politicians some brownie points with scared-to-death Boomers, it will be to their detriment in appealing to the growing Millennial generation.

In a world where we are afraid of all the wrong things and ignore the real dangers we face, this kind of pathetic outrage is not surprising, but hopefully one day people will start to actually read the research and evidence before they begin their political posturing. As Dan Abrams would say, this is why America hates Washington.

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Marc Ambinder of The Atlantic wrote of The GOP Generational Time Bomb and created this very telling chart:

Well, despite the fact that Marc Ambinder gets it, there are still many that are blind to the youth vote and seem to find it a personal mission to ignore or discount all of the research and evidence that has been done over the last few years.

Cassy Fiano of Wizbang flat-out mocks the youth vote in a response to the Washington Post article that makes the statement that the youth vote will matter in 2008. Here is Cassy’s thoughts about the civic reawakening of the Millennial generation:

A civic reawakening? Were 20-year-olds “awake” to politics before and somehow “fell asleep”? Um… ok. And, you know, there’s the teensy problem of this poll being conducted with MTV’s help, which automatically dampens the prospect of it becoming a reality.

Look, if “young people” vote, then that’s fantastic. If they don’t, then oh well. They aren’t going to make or break elections, no matter how much the media fawns over them. Every election season its the same old song and dance, and it ain’t a different tune this time around.

It’s not just Cassy Fiano that gets it wrong. Don Surber takes on Marc Ambinder’s piece referenced above. In his commentary, with the cliche title Young People Don’t Vote, he gets it so wrong that the Darwin Awards should make an exception and “honor” a living person.

But young people are a waste of time and energy when it comes to voting. They are not where the voters are.

Voters over time tend to grow more conservative. The percentage of young voters who were Republican was at its nadir in 1952. But Republican Ike Eisenhower was elected president. See Pew Research.

In 2000, Dems held an 8-point advantage in this group and still lost the presidency (Al Gore’s plurality was measured in tenths of a point).

In 2004, Democrats increased that lead to 11 points. Bush won by 3 points.

If there are long-term effects, how did Republican Richard Nixon get elected 16 years after that 1952 nadir — and President Reagan re-elected 16 years after that — and President Bush 16 years after that? Those young Democrats became Middle Aged Independents and then Old Republicans.

Ambinder said it is a ticking bomb. Oh there’s a bomb in that post all right, but I don’t think it is on the Republicans.

The PEW Research source he uses, could that be something I missed that shows young people becoming more conservative as they get older? Oh no, it’s the research that Ambinder covered that shows young voters increasingly identifying as Democrats. Not the best supporting document I would think.

Here are the fallacies that these critics of the youth vote seem overly fond of:

1. Young people don’t vote, so it doesn’t matter if they identify as Democrats. Even if we accepted the untrue statement that young people don’t vote, they do eventually grow up, this isn’t Peter Pan. Since research in fact has shown that party identification for the most part stays consistent throughout life, it still should be troubling to conservatives.
2. The silly kids are Democrats now that they are young and don’t know any better, but they’ll grow out of it. Research says otherwise my conservative friends.
3. Not enough young people will vote to affect the 2008 election, since Gore and Kerry didn’t win with the youth vote. Have you not heard of a trend line? Surber actually shows the youth vote increasing from 2000 to 2004, he should know better. With elections as close as they are, as well as the examples of Democratic candidates in 2006 that did win because of the youth vote, I don’t know how they can ignore it.

Though as frustrated as I get sometimes reading this nonsense, there is a silver lining. As long as conservatives completely write off the youth vote as unimportant and believe that the ghost of Ronald Reagan will personally visit each young person as they get older and magically turn them into Republicans, Democrats have an unobstructed field. So conservatives, by all means, keep it up. The youth vote doesn’t matter, don’t worry about it.

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Can’t take your eyes off this year’s election coverage? Are you tired of reading the same ‘ole rhetoric on the so -called “Youthquake?” Would you jump at an opportunity to report on the 2008 election and how it impacts your community? If you’ve answered YES, then we want to hear from you!

Rock the Vote in partnership with WireTap magazine is searching for aspiring or established reporters for Rock the Trail. Sponsored by AT&T, Rock the Trail will capture today’s politics through the eyes and in the words of young voters. Rock the Trail reporters will deliver insightful and compelling blogs, articles and videos from the communities they live in, reporting on young people’s top issues such as jobs, the economy and college affordability. Content will be posted on http://www.rockthevote.com, http://www.wiretapmag.org , http://www.BET.com, and will also be available for viewing on AT&T mobile phones. In addition, we will be working with the washingtonpost.com to contribute unique perspectives complementary to the site’s vast coverage of the 2008 presidential campaign.

Entries will be judged by an advisory panel of distinguished journalists including: Jeff Chang, award-winning author of Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip Hop Generation, Sian-Pierre Regis, producer, BET News, Peter Rothberg, associate publisher, The Nation magazine and Jose Antonio Vargas, political feature writer, The Washington Post. Individuals will be chosen based on the creativity and originality of his or her application, and ability to write in a clear, concise manner.

Rock the Trail reporters will be paid a monthly stipend and supplied with a laptop, cell phone and video camera to rock the 2008 campaign trail. Reporters will interview candidates, elected officials, campaigners, young voters and Rock the Vote artists discussing everything from the Presidential race to mayoral elections and anything in between.

So, if you’re a U.S. citizen between the ages of 18-29 and interested in reporting on one of the most exciting times in U.S. politics, please click here to complete an application by May 7th (not a minute after 11:59pm.)

Rock the Trail is part of a yearlong alliance between AT&T and Rock the Vote to engage young people in the democratic process by bringing the election to them through their mobile phones.

Additional Information:

• Entry Guidelines
• Online Application Form

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This is the fourth and final part of my Developing a Traditional Media Strategy series. Part 1 covered media lists and press releases, Part 2 covered working with reporters, Part 3 covered media monitoring, and this post will cover rapid response and letters-to-the-editor.

Build your list

The first step in creating a rapid response program is to create a list of the newspapers in your area and to find the email addresses for submitting letters to the editor. You should be able to find the information online on their contact page or on the op-ed page. You will want to take note of any other pertinent information that you find. For example, some newspapers will not look at letters that have been submitted to any other publication. You also want to see if they post any guidelines on letter length or format, which you will want to convey to your team.

Assemble your team

Find your best writers and ask them if they would be willing to join your rapid response team. When certain issues arise these people will be those you rely on to send letters to the papers to which you direct them. For very important issues that are getting a lot of coverage you may want to blast your entire email list about it, but your core rapid response team will be your most reliable group that you count on to follow through.

Educate your team

It is important that for each rapid response item you send your team the information they need. Here is a list of some of that information:

• A general introduction of the issue and why it is important. Sell them on why they should put the effort in on the issue.
• Talking points that you would like them to follow in their letters. These will help your team write their letters and keep them on the message that you are trying to spread.
• The papers that you want them to submit their letters to with the email addresses for submission.
• Letter-writing tips and guidelines, such as length (normally 250-500 words), that they should be concise, and that they should be careful to avoid anything libelous.

Determining what to write about

Topics for rapid response should have recently been in the news and be relevant to the readers of the paper. If the topic is not relevant the letters will be ignored. Choose topics that help you get out your organization’s message.

Talk Radio

If you have a heads up that are certain topic is going to be discussed or a certain person interviewed on a talk radio station, the rapid response process is similar to LTE. Email your team with the talking points, the date, time, and channel of the broadcast, and the call-in phone number. If you are finding out about a talk radio broadcast at the last minute, call your most reliable people, brief them on what to say, and have them call in.

So that was a basic overview of rapid response and LTE. If you have more advanced tips, advice, programs that worked for you, etc. leave a comment and share.

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It is important for you to know what is being said about your organization in both new and traditional media outlets. You may also want to keep track of posts and stories about candidates, issues, and legislation that your organization is interesting in. This post will give you two tips to efficiently monitor the media. These are the methods I use in compiling all the stories in my link posts.

Tip 1: Google Alerts are your friends

I love Google Alerts. They are great not only because you are sent an email every time your selected keywords show up somewhere, but also because from these you find many great new news sources and niche blogs that you may have not known about otherwise. Having effective Google Alerts depends on the same things that result in effective Google searches: it’s all about selecting your query so it only returns results that are pertinent to you.

The Google Search Guide is a good basic reference. In finding stories for my link posts, I use keywords such as “youth vote” “young voter” “young democrat” “college democrat” and “YDA.” Using quotation marks in your query will only return results that have all the words in order. In the case of the query “young democrat” not using the quotation marks would result in delivering all posts with either the word ‘young’ or ‘democrat,’ which is not specific enough to be useful.

Notice that my keyword is “young democrat” instead of “young democrats.” The former keyword will return results for both ‘young democrat’ and ‘young democrats,’ where “young democrats” would exclude ‘young democrat’ results. I would have missed out on a story that talked about “a young democrat from Arizona.”

My personal preferences for my Google Alerts is to have them Comprehensive (returning results from news, blogs, web, video, and groups) and to be sent as-it-happens (as opposed to once-a-day or weekly). This casts the widest net and returns the results to while they are still fresh.

When you are starting out write down a list of the topics that you would like to be alerted about. Obviously you will want your organization’s name, but there may be a lot more that would be useful to you. Once you have your list think about the best keywords to get you that result, add those alerts, and then adjust based on trial and error. I remember when I was setting up a Google Alert to get stories about Harry Mitchell (the best member of Congress in the United States, in my opinion) before he was elected to Congress. At first I used the keyword “Harry Mitchell,” but I noticed that most of my results had nothing to do with the Harry Mitchell I was looking for. I then tried ‘Arizona “Harry Mitchell”‘ and got better results. If you aren’t getting exactly what you want out of your alert, play with it until you do.

To learn how to really get specific searches, check out 20 Tips for More Efficient Google Searches.

Tip 2: RSS feeds will save you time and effort

RSS (Real Simple Syndication) in my opinion is the greatest thing since Firefox (which should be your default web browser). No longer must we individually visit every website we would like to read, not knowing whether or not it has been updated. No longer must we traverse the deluge of browser bookmarks, wasting time, energy, and bandwidth. Now the content comes to us, and it is a beautiful thing.

For those yet unfamiliar with the wonders of RSS, here is the basic concept. Your RSS aggregator (more popularly known as a feed reader) receives new content from the sites you subscribe to as it is published. All of the posts are aggregated in one place, so you don’t have to hop from site to site and you always know when there is new content.

The first thing you need to do is get a feed reader. You have many different options here. There are two main categories of readers: web-based and desktop application. I prefer to use a web-based reader because it enables me to read my feeds from any computer with an internet connection, as well as from my Blackberry. I use Google Reader, which is in my opinion the best option by far. The advantage of desktop application readers had been the ability to read previously downloaded feeds while you were offline, but now that many online readers include offline capabilities, that advantage has been negated. Some other online readers include Newsgator and Bloglines, as well as the Yahoo!, Google, and Live portals. Since you are probably going to be really working those feeds, I suggest the more robust online readers over the portal options, which tend to give you more of a cursory glance at a few feeds.

So you have chosen a feed reader. Now you need to find the feeds that you are interested in. Let me help you with your first few. Subscribe to Kevin Bondelli’s YD Blog. Subscribe to the YDA Blog. Subscribe to Future Majority. First let me commend you on your first three subscriptions, you have excellent taste. Now you need to subscribe to the other feeds you are interested in. Almost every newspaper offers RSS feeds for its articles segmented by topic or section. Visit the websites of your local newspapers and subscribe to those sections that you want to track. Go to leftyblogs.com and subscribe to the blogs in your state. Look at the blogrolls of blogs you currently read and check out those blogs to see if you would like to subscribe to them. If a website or blog has been coming up a lot on your Google Alerts for your keywords, it is probably a good idea to subscribe. Your subscription list will probably be changing often as you add new feeds and delete those that have not been useful. The longer you use your reader the better your subscription list will get, so keep it up.

For a huge list of RSS resources, check out the Ultimate RSS Toolbox at Mashable.

Conclusion

Between Google Alerts and tracking RSS feeds you will get pretty good coverage of the topics that interest you, as well as what is being said about your organization. There are other ways to keep track of stories and trends, but I am leaving the responsibility of sharing those ways with you. Leave a comment and share your methods, ideas, and resources.

Previous articles in the Traditional Media Strategy series:

Part 1: Media Lists and Press Releases

Part 2: Working With Reporters

Next post: Part 4: Rapid Response and LTE

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In Part 1 of the Developing a Traditional Media Strategy series I discussed how to create a media contact list and best practices for writing and sending press releases. Today’s post will give you some advice on working with reporters once you have their attention.

Tips for working with reporters

• No matter what you may have seen on television, there is no such thing as “off-the-record.” Don’t say anything to a reporter that you do not want to see in print.
• When a reporter calls for an interview that you were not expecting, ask what the subject of the interview will be and if you can call them back immediately. Don’t get caught off guard in an interview. Ask the reporter about their deadline (this let’s them know you understand how the process works and lets you know your time frame). The time between the reporter’s initial call and your return call is your time to prepare for the interview. Jot down the talking points that you may want to use and gather any statistics and keep them in front of you as a reference. This will ensure that you stay on message and sound informed.
• If you are at a social event with a reporter, watch what you say and how you act. A reporter is never truly off duty, so make sure you don’t do or say anything that would be an embarrassment to you or your organization.
• Respect a reporter’s deadline. If you leave them hanging they will not come back to you for interviews or comments.
• Keep your interviews to the facts. Don’t make baseless accusations, don’t whine, and don’t use ad hominem attacks.
• Once you have completed your interview, ask when the story will run. You don’t want to miss it.
• If you are going to interview in person or on camera, make sure you are dressed appropriately and are adequately groomed.
• The pivot is your friend, as long as you are the one doing it. If you are doing an interview about increased youth turnout in your state, and the reporter is shifting the subject to something else, bring the interview right back. This is another one of those subtle arts, but you can learn from watching television interviews and talking to communications professionals. Just make sure to never be rude, condescending, or otherwise offensive, or your pivot will become a stumble.

Those are a few things to keep in mind when you are working with reporters. I an sure there is a lot more advice on this subject out there, so share it by leaving a comment.

Tomorrow’s post – Part 3: Media Monitoring

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This is the first in a four-part series about developing a traditional media strategy.

So I have written about reaching out to new media, but it is always important to develop a traditional media strategy to get your message out to print, radio, and television news. This post will help you create a media contact list and learn some best practices about writing and sending press releases.

Building your media list

So before you can send out press releases, you need people to send them out to. This is why you need to create a media contact list of reporters and editors that are on beats that would be interested in covering your organization. Read through your local newspapers and find the names of the reporters that cover local and state politics. Once you have a list of names for reporters that may be interested in calling you, find the contact page of the news organizations website (here is the LA Times contact page as an example). From here you can complete your contact list. You may want to call the reporters before you ever send them anything to make sure that your organization falls under the scope of their beat and ask permission to send them your releases. You can go either way here. Some people like to build a relationship with a reporter first, others like to start sending releases to avoid being blown off in the first place. Create a spreadsheet in Excel or your software of choice and you are ready to go.

Sending press releases

The first rule of press releases in a traditional media strategy is to not overwhelm the reporter or editor with the sheer volume of releases. They get a ridiculous amount of releases sent to them every day, so don’t be part of the problem. Only send releases that are interesting, current, and relevant to the reporter, paper, and their readership.

The most effective way to make sure a reporter is aware of your release is to give them a call. Once again, don’t abuse this. Every communications director and press secretary worth their Blackberry does this. The important thing here is to be considerate of the reporter. Don’t try to badger them into writing your story. If you do this right you will be building a relationship with the reporters, which means they will trust you more than the random person sending a press release and will possibly come to you when they need a comment for a story pertaining to something relevant to your organization.

Send your releases from an official email address from your organization. Your release is much more likely to be taken seriously.

Content and format of a press release

Here are some of the rules of press release content and formatting:

General Rules:

• A release should address the 5 Ws: Who, What, When, Where, and Why.
• If you are writing about an event make sure to include the date, time, and location.
• The release should be around a page to a page-and-a-half double-spaced.
• Your release should include contact information for the person the reporter should call for more information.
• Always end your release with “###” or “<END>” to let the reporter know that they have reached the end of the release. If you have a hard copy of a release always have “<MORE>” at the bottom of the first page.
• Fonts – use one of the big three: Arial, Times New Roman, or Verdana. Don’t try anything fancy with your fonts. If you send me a release in Vladimir Script (or worse, Comic Sans) you are about to enter a world of pain.
• I personally like including my organization’s logo on my release to help draw attention and show that it is coming from us. If you choose to do this in your email releases, DO NOT include the image as an attachment to the email. Host the image online and have the document call for it. To do this in Microsoft Word (for sending out through Outlook): Insert>>Picture>>From File. Instead of using the picture on your hard drive you just enter the URL of the image that you have on your web server.

Headline:

• The headline is arguably the most important part of your release. A good headline is the difference between getting noticed and being lost in the crowd of other releases flooding the editor’s inbox. It should be very clear from the headline exactly what the release is about, don’t get too cute with it.
• The headline should be bold and in a larger type than the rest of the release.
• The general rule for capitalization in a headline is to capitalize every word that contains four or more characters.
• End your release with a brief description of your organization. Here is the YDAZ about language for releases: YDAZ is the youth arm of the Arizona Democratic Party, working to build strong chapters and a solid youth voting bloc for Democrats statewide. As a chapter of the Young Democrats of America, YDAZ mobilizes young people under the age of 36 to participate in the electoral process, influence the ideals of the Democratic Party and develop the skills of the youth generation to serve as leaders at the local, state, and national level.

First Paragraph:

• <city>, <state>: should start off the first paragraph of every press release. The reporter needs to know where the news is located.
• Your first paragraph needs to be concise and make clear the content of the release. A tip I have often heard is to write the first paragraph as if the reporter has not read your headline (which sometimes is actually the case).

To look at some examples of press releases, you can view all of the AZ Democratic Party’s past releases here on their website.

There is more to writing and sending press releases than this. If you want help ask some people in your area that work in communications. The communications director or press secretary at your state party may be willing to help.

If you have any questions, ideas, etc. leave a comment.

Tomorrow’s post: Part 2: Working With reporters

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