ROLL CALL REPORTER SUE DAVIS
By Katie Mas

A 27-year old woman walks into the House periodical gallery, checks the schedule and then heads out to patrol the Capitol hallways for stories.

It is another exciting day on Capitol Hill for political journalist Sue Davis. Though she may be younger than most of her colleagues, Davis, House reporter for Roll Call newspaper, is a veteran in policy and politics.

“I like reporting on the Hill because you’re not sitting at a desk all day. You’re always looking for a story and meeting people you wouldn’t have otherwise,” Davis told a Georgetown University journalism class on Monday.

Davis started out as an American History major at American University. She became interested in journalism when she interned for Washingtonian Magazine and People Magazine. She developed her interest in government while working for the Almanac of American Politics and landed her first job covering the Hill for Congress Daily.

She gave the Georgetown class insight on what it takes to become a successful reporter. She told the students that it took her three years to get her name known and her voice heard as a journalist.

“You need to be the type of person [congressmen] want to talk to. The more you report, the better sources you get,” Davis advised the students. “It’s a fight everyday to get the good story, but the excitement makes it fun being on Capitol Hill.”

TEEN VOTERS WANT CHANGE, REASON FOR POLITICAL ENTHUSIASM
By Katie Mas

Teen voters are looking for change in government and have the power to play an important role in choosing the next president, political experts say. With their turnout increasing, America’s youth is becoming an extremely significant group, and presidential campaigns are forced to pay attention to them.

“The Millennial Generation is concerned with what’s going on. They’re engaged, and they’re looking for change," says Mary McClelland, the national field director for Young Voter Strategies .

The Millennial Generation is the largest American generation ever, according to the New Politics Institute. It consists of those born from 1982 to the present. The Millennials will make up a third of the citizen-eligible electorate by 2015. The New Politics Institute says they are much more involved in politics than the Generation Xers who preceded them. Research shows they are America’s most diverse generation and care about what’s going on around them – from social issues to the U.S.’s foreign policy in Iraq.

McClelland says that for the first time in history, every campaign for the 2008 election has hired a field director for young voters. Campaigns have used the Internet as one way to reach out to them. Fifteen out of eighteen announced presidential candidates have pages on both www.myspace.com and www.facebook.com, the two most popular social networking websites in the country.

Teens can go to the candidates’ pages to learn more about their campaigns. They can learn why they are running, their favorite movies and what they like to do for fun. For example, on www.facebook.com, teens can find out that Barack Obama’s favorite movies are The Godfather I and II, or that John McCain enjoys watching “Seinfeld” and “24”. These non-political facts about the candidates give them an identity that teens can relate to. On www.myspace.com, teens also have the option to post a candidate’s “banner” on their own sites. This banner is a form of campaign advertising among teens.

A recent informal survey of teen voters by the Georgetown Summer Journalism Workshop found that 71% of teens aged 17-20 plans to vote in the next election. More than three quarters of teens say that they follow politics and discuss politics at home. All of these statistics point to the fact that teens are getting more involved in politics and are likely to impact the next election.

In 1972, the year that the voting age was brought down to 18, there was the highest voter turnout among young people ever: 52%. After that year, young voter turnout steadily decreased. Things changed in the 2000 election, when voter turnout among young people started increasing again.

“In the 2004 election, there was a lot of hype. There was P. Diddy’s Vote or Die campaign and MTV’s Rock the Vote. The number of 18-24-year-olds increased by 8-11 percentage points,” said McClelland, commenting on the increase in youth voting from 36% in 2000 to 47% in 2004.

"When looking at the candidates, I want someone who has a good plan. I am looking for someone who supports more progressive social change," says 19-year-old Danielle Eustice of Washington, DC.

Most teenagers hope change is the result of the 2008 election. According to the Georgetown survey, many hope for less corruption, more transparency, a better economic policy, and different education policies.

Some people do not believe teens are interested in politics or motivated to vote. Although three out of four teens in the Georgetown survey say that they pay attention to politics, more than half of them say that their friends do not care about what is going on in the world. On This Week with George Stephanopoulos, Cokie Roberts showed that she was unconvinced by the youth vote by predicting that once again they would not turn out on Election Day.

“I find it hard to get 18-year-olds to do anything,” says Roll Call reporter Sue Davis, who feels skeptical about teens’ enthusiasm for politics and voting.

According to McClelland, the notion that young people will always vote Democrat is incorrect. She claims that the reason they will probably vote Democrat in the next election is because they desire a change in government, and specifically an end to the Iraq war.

“The assumption that young people are liberal tree-huggers is wrong. Nixon, a Republican, won the youth vote when he was elected,” says McClelland.

Survey results show that the continuing war in Iraq and Afghanistan might motivate usually apathetic teens to head to the polls. According to research done by the Boston Globe, young people were shocked by the 9/11 attacks and became more worried about their own security. Because the U.S. is now at war, teens have become concerned with their role as citizens of the United States, a world superpower.

“I do not support Bush’s Iraq policy. We entered for no reason. Unilateral actions take by the U.S. is antithetical to how the world should work,” says Alysa Hannon, a sophomore at Georgetown University. “I would like to see a complete change in administration. I believe that this would reduce corruption and imperialism in our government.”

The Georgetown informal survey also found that:

• Teens care most about the War in Iraq and global warming
• Three-fourths of teens discuss politics at home
• Most teens plan to vote for Barack Obama in 2008
• 91% of teen girls plan to vote compared to only 50% of teen boys who plan to vote