Millennials Conference Opening Remarks

ANDREW KOHUT: Good morning. I’m Andrew Kohut. I’m the president of the Pew Research Center. Welcome to our in-depth presentation of data about America’s newest generation, the Millennials, or, Generation Next. For a long time, it’s been my view that young people were out of fashion. When the baby Boomers began to slip into middle age, there was less interest in young people. That was until this generation showed up. And over the past decade, the young people who came of age in the first decade of the new century, the Millennials really made their presence known pretty quickly socially, culturally and very distinctively by being always connected to the new media and the new information technology. Politically, they were the first generation of young people since the 1970s to vote quite differently than older people. Their votes were of consequence to the “change election” in 2006 and Barack Obama’s victory in 2008. Now, as to their consequence, I might add that while their Baby-Boomer parents made a lot of noise in the ’60s and ’70s, they never elected anyone except Richard Nixon. (Laughter.) And I don’t think that’s what they had in mind. (Laughter.) But this generation did have consequence and did get its way politically, at least for two elections. Our search on this generation began mid-decade in surveys and analysis we conducted in association with Judy Woodruff and the NewsHour for its “Gen Next” series. And the research that we’re going to be talking about today and have carried on ever since was built on that seminal work. Our discussion today draws on a couple of things: First, a new public opinion survey that contrasts the attitudes and behaviors of 18- to 29-year-olds to older generations. But we’ve also mined more than two decades of Pew Research Center surveys and supplemented this by analyses of Census Bureau data and other relevant studies. Now, before I go any further, what I’d like to do is to introduce the person who made all of this possible: Rebecca Rimel, president and CEO of The Pew Charitable Trusts. Rebecca is a rare combination of things. First of all, she’s super smart, she’s entrepreneurial, she’s focused on the big issues of our time, and she is an agent of change – believe me. She is also my long-term friend. (Applause.) REBECCA RIMEL: Well, good morning, and, Andy, thank you for that overly generous introduction. I’m here to do three things, three very important things. First of all, to welcome you to this discussion of a seminal report on the Millennial generation. Second, to be the first I think publicly to salute Andy Kohut on the new addition to his family yesterday: Rosco, a four-legged new friend. Andy, we think that’s great. And third, to be able to stand here and tell you how proud I am of the 15-year anniversary of the Pew Research Center. So I thought I’d just spend a minute and tell you kind of how it started. It was 15 years ago and one of my staff came into my office completely dejected. He said, you know, I was really hoping that we would be able to get a speaker from the Times Mirror Center to come in and to talk about their work and help us with ours. And I said, great idea, I read about them all the time in the press. He goes, they’re put out of business. I said, really? That’s hard to imagine given their reputation. And he said, well, yes, it’s cost-cutting. So I think remembering that there was serious cost-cutting going down in journalism even 15 years ago. Their accomplishments, especially when you consider that they were being quoted daily in the competitors’ media; really, they had no peer. So after about one minute of soul-searching, we reached out to Andy, and as they say, the rest is history. I can’t think of anything else that we have done that more fulfills the mission and the mandate of our founders. And I thought I would take just a minute and digress to 1946. Joseph Newton Pew received a telegram – anybody remember what a telegram is? – from Look magazine, which had almost the readership of Life magazine, and they were doing a piece on what we can do to improve government. Some things don’t change. And what they ask as luminaries of the day is if you were president, what would be the first two things that you would do? So he would not answer – he was a very private man – and the telegrams kept coming. So finally, he sent one back. Tell the truth and trust the people. The editors came back and said, that’s too brief – again, novel idea, this day and time –you need to expand on it. And Mr. Pew, he stood his ground. He sent back a telegram and said, I would like my statement to stand as belief: Full light of day on every subject is appropriate. And I can’t think of any greater mission or mandate for us or any better organization to carry that out than the Pew Research Center. Well, 15 years is a long time, and a lot has changed in that time. Just think about it. When the Pew Research Center started, less than a quarter of Americans had a cell phone, less than 20 percent had Internet access. Hispanics represented about 9 percent of the population – today 16 percent or more. And in journalism, my gracious, what a change; 50 percent of the people got their news from the newspaper only 15 years ago; today, about 34 percent. Ten million less people watching the nightly news, and as many people in this room know, the devastating cuts in newsrooms – 55,000 only 15 years ago; 40,000 or less now. And I believe that’s what makes the work of the Pew Research Center yet even more important. I’m delighted to also be able to express my gratitude to Judy Woodruff, who is going to be here to ably guide our discussions today. She’s a friend, a colleague and we have had a wonderful partnership. And important to remember, it was really Judy’s groundbreaking work on “Generation Next” that started to tell us about this very, very important generation. So let me end by extending my thanks to the entire Pew Research Center staff for their tremendous work and what they do each and every day. I really do believe that they’re a national treasure. And Andy, my admiration and my personal gratitude for your many professional accomplishments, but most of all, for our partnership and our friendship. And my colleagues, especially Don Kimelman, and our board and all of our staff join me in thanking the Pew Research Center for telling the truth and trusting the people. Thank you very much. (Applause.) MR. KOHUT: Thank you, Rebecca. We will be focusing today on the 50 million 18- to 29-year- olds in examining their attitudes and their behaviors, and we’re going to be doing three things principally. We’re going to look at how these Millennials differ today from older people. Pretty standard fare in most survey research and political research, social research. We’ll be doing something different, as well. We’re going to look at how they differ from previous generations of Americans when they were that age – particularly, how they differ from Generation X and the older end of the baby-boom cohort. Now, we can do that because we have more than 20 years of data, so we can look at today’s 30- to 49-year-olds and say, well, what were they like, what were their attitudes, what were their behaviors back in the early ’90s, and we can even do that into the ’80s for the previous generation, or the tail end of the previous generation. The third thing we’ll do is we’ll look at how the Millennial generation has changed in recent years. Yes, it’s a new generation; they have only been around a short period of time. But they’re already showing some signs of change and they’re pretty interesting. Our first session – and there will be three sessions – will be to provide a broad overview of the Millennial generation, examining their demographics, values, attitudes and behaviors, and discussing the results of the new survey that was conducted specifically for this event. It will be led by Paul Taylor, executive vice president of the Pew Research Center and the Millennial project leader. Our second session looks at Millennials, the media and the information revolution, of which they are an integral part. It will be led by Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism. Our final session, the Millennials in politics, will be led by the Pew Research Center’s Scott Keeter and Michael Dimock. Now, let me turn the proceedings over to Judy Woodruff, distinguished journalist and senior correspondent with the NewsHour. And as Rebecca noted, she got us going on this path with her insightful proposal many years ago to Pew and PBS that this was a generation well worth looking into in considerable depth. But before I do that, I just want to remind – or, tell you about something, or, perhaps remind you that at some point you might want to see how Millennial you actually are. We have a little test on our internet site (http://pewresearch.org/millennials/quiz/intro.php) which asks you some questions and classifies you on a scale of 1 to 100 in terms of how much your behaviors and attitudes are Millennial-like, if there is such a term. I scored 5. (Laughter.) Paul Taylor scored 8. But nonetheless, we’re going to tell you about Millennials. (Laughter.) I love it. Judy, do you want – Judy, you haven’t taken the test! JUDY WOODRUFF: I haven’t taken it yet. Thank you, Andy. Thank you, thank you. Thank you, Andy Kohut. This is an organization with humility. When they tell you your scores and urge you to take the test. I just want to thank Andy Kohut – Andy, for the tremendous work you’ve done leading the Pew Research Center through this project and every other project that they work on. You truly are at the Pew Research Center “a national treasure,” as Rebecca said, and particularly for journalists, who look to you day-in and day-out for the kind of information that we can trust. And thank you, Rebecca Rimel, for providing the encouragement and the inspiration for this project but, personally for me 5 years ago, that led me to get involved and to go on to do the work that we did together. It was the first Millennials undertaking. We called it then “Generation Next.” It remains one of the most joyful reporting experiences of my journalistic career. How many journalists get to travel around the entire country – 17 states, 29 cities – interviewing over 500 young people? I fell in love then with this endlessly interesting generation, something you might say was preordained since I was already curious about their political behavior, and I am the mother of three in this age cohort. They fascinated me then; they continue to fascinate me. And I jumped at the chance when Andy brought up the idea of this prospect of doing this a few months ago and asked if I’d be interested in being involved in some way.