Media, Internet court young Latino swing vote

By: Tyche Hendricks, Chronicle Staff Writer

Take 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 SíTV, 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 María Teresa Petersen, director of Voto Latino, a media-savvy, nonpartisan voter registration group. "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 are shaping up to 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 DC.  READ MORE