ShareThisTake two twentysomething Latinos with a taste for politics, give them a crash course in news reporting, equip them with video cameras and press credentials, "embed" them at the Democratic and Republican conventions this summer and let 'er rip.That's the idea cooked up by the nonprofit Voto Latino and SiTV, the cable and Internet company geared to young English-speaking Latinos.The collaboration, dubbed "Crash the Parties '08," has already drawn dozens of online applications from wannabe-embedded reporters. The two who are ultimately chosen will produce newscasts, video blogs and interviews with candidates and convention delegates for a growing audience of hip, bicultural Latinos who may not be all that plugged in yet to the political process."Young people aren't participating because they don't really know how the process works," said Maria Teresa Petersen, director of Voto Latino, a media-savvy, nonpartisan voter-registration group founded in 2004. "What better way to engage than to have someone who looks like them and talks like them to break the process down?"The project is part of a new surge of attention being paid to young Latinos, who could be this election's "soccer moms," a decisive group of swing voters, as well as a coveted market demographic of "new media" consumers. Of the nation's 18 million eligible Latino voters, half are under 40, and tens of thousands more reach voting age every month, according to the Pew Hispanic Center in Washington.Other media companies are also interested in the burgeoning market:-- The online social networking company MySpace launched a bilingual site, MySpace Latino, last week. It has virtual communities geared toward soccer, music, fashion and other Hispanic "passion points," according to managing director Victor Kong. Politics doesn't yet merit its own community on the site, he said, but the company did team up with MTV earlier this year to produce presidential "town-hall meetings" that include a focus on Latino issues.-- The Spanish-language media company ImpreMedia, which publishes the San Francisco weekly newspaper El Mensajero, the Los Angeles daily La Opinion and others, also is rolling out a Web portal this week to link the news and entertainment content of all its print and Internet products. It is intended especially for younger Latinos, who use the Internet more readily than their parents.Those endeavors are part of a larger courtship of the fast-growing young Latino audience. Marketers and political campaigns are increasingly reaching them through interactive media, using social networking, text messaging and -- in the case of "Crash the Parties" -- asking viewers to nominate and vote, a la "American Idol," for the folks who will cover the political conventions."In reaching this segment, there has to be an interactive component," said Patricia Gaitan, a board member of the Association of Hispanic Advertising Agencies. "The SiTV method is right on target and in a fashion that's going to resonate for them."One SiTV hopeful is Christopher Timbo Temblador, a sociology major at San Jose State University who has worked as a congressional intern, blogs regularly and volunteers as a college adviser at a local high school."Being the son of immigrants, I can talk about being raised in poverty and striving to get my education, but I also understand what's going on at the federal level and how to use all the resources of the media," said Temblador, 22.Sacramento, Calif., political strategist Sam Rodriguez believes the growth of the Latino electorate -- combined with contested primaries and galvanizing issues -- may create "a perfect storm" that engages young Latino voters such as Temblador.Contestants have until May 6 to upload a video discussing why they should represent young Latinos at the conventions. Then viewers can vote and those votes will be considered by a panel of judges, including actress Rosario Dawson, Craigslist founder Craig Newmark and CNN anchor Rick Sanchez, who will also train and mentor the two young reporters.(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
Media, Internet court young Latino swing vote
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