In the 1992 presidential campaign, candidates began to turn away from the traditional television news media and toward the “new” news media in their quest to communicate with voters. Candidates found that they much preferred jovial banter with Larry King or David Letterman to answering the hard questions of the day from a network journalist. Th at trend has continued, and it is now de rigueur for presidential candidates to sit on Oprah’s couch or humorously spar with Jon Stewart on Th e Daily Show. Th e normative implications of this development are still in dispute. Some observers see this shift from hard to soft news as damaging to the political process. Th omas Patterson, for instance, argues that the change has weakened people’s interest in politics and the news, especially among young adults.1 Others, however, see a silver lining in the shift to soft news, viewing it as a way to reconnect young people with politics. Under this view, young people may not sit down to read a daily newspaper, but they will watch Th e Daily Show, and in doing so, will unintentionally learn a lot about politics.