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Mindich, David T.Z. Tuned Out: Why Americans Under 40 Don't Follow the News. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. 172 pp. $16.95.
We are always a little suspicious of the next generation. What is up with their music? Their clothes? And why do they not act the way we did when we were younger?
Add something new to the list: a failure to keep up with public affairs. In Tuned Out, David T.Z. Mindich paints a dismal-but not altogether bleak-portrait of how much (and little) young people care and know about the political world. Combining the broad brush strokes of national surveys with careful indepth interviews conducted across the country, he provides a subtitle that sums up his thesis: Why Americans Under 40 Don't Follow The News. Note the assumption in the subtide. Not whether they follow the news, but why they fail to. Why are his findings not altogether bleak? More on this shortly.
Many of Mindich's answers are hardly surprising, especially...