Kids & politics, online/offline

Personal as well as national politics, judging from Children's PressLine's coverage of the Democratic National Convention in Boston (at Connect for Kids). Three CPL reporters received media credentials to report from the convention floor - Gabriel Decker-Lee, 10; Laurence James, 13; and Nily Rozic, 18 - but a lot of people's good thinking backed them up: "We know we won't be the only journalists there. There'll be like 50,000 other reporters trying to get [politicians' comments] too. But ... because we are small and because we're kids, politicians will be more open to talking. We won't be surprised if we hear a lot of other reporters complaining, 'Oh, I can't believe I lost another interview to those kids!'" When they report on politics, Children's PressLine news teams focus on issues that affect people under 18. Here's more on this at ConnectforKids.org. It's important work - for both kids and the grownups who support them, because, according to USAToday, "experts see a critical need to engage America's youth since the percentage of adults who vote continues to decline. Even worse are voter participation rates among younger Americans. While about half of college-age students are registered to vote, only one in five actually does. By comparison, three out of five people over the age of 55 vote, according to the US Census Bureau." For more on teaching kids about the democratic process, see TakeYourKidstoVote.org and KidsVote2004. "A search for "politics" on AOL's KOL channel, which screens out inappropriate sites for kids under the age of 13, turns up more than 820 Web sites," USAToday reports, linking to some of them too.