Articles

Millennials Celebrate the Death of Their Arch Nemesis
"The attacks of September 11, 2001 occurred when most Millennials were in school and it remains the moment most remember as the day they realized the dangers of the world around them. Safety and security concerns became a permanent part of their lives. "
By Morley Winograd and Michael D. Hais
Huffington Post
May 2, 2011

Put Millennials First
"Even as President Obama got cool creds for conducting a town hall with Facebook's founder, Mark Zuckerberg, an estimated 10 thousand young people rallied in Washington under the banner of the Energy Action Coalition's "PowerShift 2011" to demand the administration do more about climate change and the need for a clean energy economy."
By Morley Winograd and Michael D. Hais
Huffington Post
May 1, 2011

ImageThink Vision Board
 
"Generational differences are just as great as national cultural differences, but are rarely perceived. Millennials will dominate the key demographic of ages 18-49 by 2014 and beyond. Unlike other generations, Millennials are unifiers, optimistic, grassroots oriented, and masters of new methods of socially-driven communications."
Morley Winograd
All Tomorrow's Donuts
April 11, 2011

Obama Goes to War the Millennial Way
Millennials have been taught since they were toddlers that the best way to solve a societal problem is to act upon it directly, and as a part of a larger group. That is exactly what President Obama has done with America demurring to take a permanent lead in the joint effort in order not to offend the sensibilities of NATO allies and Arabs alike.
By Michael Hais and Morley Winograd
Huffington Post
March 10, 2011

Walker Awakens a Sleeping Giant
"For the first time in decades, driven by the emergence of the Millennial Generation, the nation's youngest politically active generation (born 1982-2003), the public is as positive about labor unions as it is about business corporations."
By Michael Hais and Morley Winograd
Huffington Post
March 10, 2011

The Millennial Mosaic
"... if one searches Google for the seemingly innocuous phrase, “US majority nonwhite 2040,” two of the first three listings are from racist groups decrying this change and the third is from a liberal group advising the need to “understand” the fears of white people in a rapidly changing America. "
By Morley Winograd and Michael D. Hais
NewGeography.com
February 24, 2011

Victory for Egypt's Leaderless Revolution
"As jubilant young Egyptians danced in the streets of Cairo and Alexandria, celebrating the departure of their 82 year old former president, American television commentators immediately began discussing two issues that seemed to them to be of greatest importance: who were the leaders of the uprising and how did they use social media to bring down the reign of a 30-year dictatorship? In doing so, they revealed the same type of inter-generational misunderstandings that cost Hosni Mubarak his presidency. "
By Morley Winograd and Michael D. Hais
Huffington Post
February 11, 2011

Why most Americans are both liberal and conservative
"Today, driven by more liberal attitudes among the Democrats' young Millennial Generation and minority supporters, and the more conservative beliefs of the Republicans' older, white base, the leadership of the two parties is more polarized than at any time since the Great Depression."
By Morley Winograd and Michael D. Hais
Christian Science Monitor
January 27, 2011

Chuck Raasch column: Baby boomers are aging like fine whine
"Both the Millennials and the World War II generation are what New Democratic Network scholars and authors Michael Hais and Morley Winograd consider "civic generations," community-minded people seared by crisis and brought together by challenge. For the World War II generation, it was the Depression and Pearl Harbor. For Millennials, it was 9/11 and its aftermath."
Appleton Post-Crescent
January 26, 2011

Mark Zuckerberg -- Our First Millennial CEO
"Facebook is the first major Internet start-up whose core group of founders and key executives are Millennials, from Chris Hughes, who left Facebook to work as director of online organizing for Barack Obama's presidential campaign and now serves as founder and CEO of Jumo, a social network for the social sector, to Sean Parker, the perennial entrepreneur who's the co-founder of Napster, Plaxo and Causes, an online advocacy and fund-raising application within Facebook."
By Jose Antonio Vargas
Huffington Post
December 9, 2010

Demography vs. Geography: Understanding the Political Future
"Right now, demography is the best friend Democrats have. Over the next four decades, the two groups that will increasingly dominate the political landscape are Hispanics and Millennials  (the generation born between 1983 and the millennium). Both groups tilted leftwards in recent elections. This trend should concern even the most jaded conservatives."
By Joel Kotkin
The American
December 8, 2010

America's new racial realities
"Obama’s election showed how much race has ceased to be a deal-breaker issue in America. Hard economic times may yet flare up bigotry, but the trend is toward tolerance. That’s because of the Millennial Generation, born in the years from 1982 to 2003."
By Antero Pietila
Washington Examiner
November 28, 2010

Looking at the data from Nov. 2, we see that the GOP still has work to do
"Despite its massive gains on November 2, the GOP can't operate as though it has a mandate. They need to operate on the adage that smart business executives understand: you have to continue to woo people after you've hired them. "
By Ryan Streeter
Conservative Home/The Republican Blog
November 22, 2010

Young voters seek to rock the elections
"Every age group has seen a rise in registered voters since 2008 but none more than voters under 24, which has increased by 42.3 percent, and voters between 25 and 35, which has ballooned by 67.9 percent. Together, both groups account for 42.8 percent of the 842,000 new voters in the state since December 2008."
By Anthony Bowe
Colorado Statesman
October 10, 2010

Millennials Are Looking for Something Completely Different
"Millennials are not interested in letting ideological posturing stand in the way of “getting stuff done,” as they like to say. Their generation’s idealism – in sharp contrast to the more ideological approach adopted by Boomers – is characterized by a pragmatic impulse focused on finding practical solutions to problems."
By Michael D. Hais and Morley Winograd
NewGeography.com
August 12, 2010

Save Us, Millennials
"...if anyone should take personally the poisoning of a vast ecosystem in the Gulf of Mexico, it should be the one cohort of the electorate that showed the most skepticism of oil companies and the strongest desire for a new green economy."
By Timothy Egan
N. Y. Times
Opinionator
June 3, 2010

Leading a Los Angeles Renaissance
"Millennials aren’t interested in confrontation and debilitating debates focused on making sure one side wins and the other loses. "
By Morley Winograd and Michael D. Hais
NewGeography.com
April 21, 2010

The Millennial Metropolis
"some of the greatest opportunities in housing will be in those metropolitan areas that can provide the same amenities of suburban life that Los Angeles did sixty years ago. In this Millennials are just like their parents who moved to the suburbs in order to buy their own home, with a front and back yard, however small, in a safe neighborhood with good schools."
By Morley Winograd and Michael D. Hais 
NewGeography.com
April 19, 2010

Dangerous Thoughts: Millennial Millstone?
How ObamaCare could alienate the president's strongest supporters.
To get some expert perspective, I put this question to Morley Winograd and Mike Hais, authors of Millennial Makeover, the political class' bible for understanding the YouTube generation. They appreciated the concern I was raising. But they were pretty confident in predicting that the health care bill, whatever its flaws, won't turn off young voters in any lasting way. They cited two main reasons: Throughout the turbulent ups and downs of the Obama era so far, young voters have remained the most loyal part of his base; and millennials are far more civic-minded than any other generational cohort and far less prone to today's zero sum politics.
Forbes
By Dan Gerstein
March 31, 2010

Move over Kanye West, Taylor Swift and the Millennial generation are taking over music
When Kanye West jumped on stage to protest Swift’s victory over Beyoncé for Best Female Video at the MTV Video Music Awards last September, he was foreshadowing just how shocked Gen-Xers will be when their signature genre, rap, drops from the top of the charts as fast as you can say “Napster.” According to the Record Industry Association of America’s official tally of music sales by genre, rap’s popularity peaked in 2002, just as the first Millennials entered adulthood, and has now fallen to third place behind country and rock in America’s musical purchases.
Christian Science Monitor
By Morley Winograd and Michael D. Hais 
January 29, 2010

Millennials Think Globally, Act Locally
In contrast to the generational stereotypes many people hold of them, Millennials are very much concerned about and connected to the world around them – more so, in fact, than many older Americans. Responding to questions on foreign policy in a recent Pew Research Center survey, only 9% of Millennials were unable to express an opinion on how President Obama is doing in working with our allies, while almost a quarter of senior citizens had no opinion on the same subject. On the knotty question of Israeli/Palestinian relations, all but 7% of Millennials could tell survey researchers what they thought of American foreign policy in this area. On the other hand, 26% of senior citizens could not (see table below).
NewGeography.com
Morley Winograd and Michael D. Hais
August 31, 2009

Are the Millennials the new GI Generation?
Two-thirds of Millennials told Pew survey researchers that they approved of the way President Obama was handling the economy, with only 5% saying his economic policies have made things worse. And although 32% of undergraduates at four-year colleges told Edison Media Research that financial worries have increased the stress they're under, 75% of Millennials expressed confidence that Obama was doing the right things to fix the economy.
By Morley Winograd and Michael D. Hais
Los Angeles Times
Opinion
June 21, 2009

Is Meghan McCain the new face of the GOP?
"In brash blog posts on the Daily Beast — "The GOP doesn't understand sex" — and outpouring of posts on Twitter, she has described herself as a pro-sex, "pro-life, pro-gay-marriage Republican," one who experts say may be at the forefront of a new GOP breed: the "Meghan McCain Republican." That GOP faction is younger and interested in fiscal responsibility and less government involvement in people's lives, while supporting environmentalism and civic engagement. They're part of the millennial generation, the largest and most diverse generation in American history, whose voters — born starting in the early 1980s — cast ballots for Barack Obama by a more than 2-to-1 ratio. "
By Carla Marinucci
San Francisco Chronicle
May 12, 2009

How to Lose a Generation
"Though many people question the political sophistication of the Millennials, they have been instilled with egalitarian and participatory values by their parents since birth. This child-rearing produced a generation that was wide open to the personal appeal and message of Barack Obama and his party. Moving forward, the initial preference of millennials for President Obama and the Democrats will remain in place for a lifetime unless Republicans can quickly adapt their message and find a messenger who can speak to this powerful new force in American politics. "
By Morley Winograd and Michael D. Hais
Los Angeles Times OP-ED
May 12, 2009

This President is No Cable Guy
Presidents and their top advisers have long gone to war against specific publications: John Kennedy famously canceled the White House subscriptions to the Republican-leaning New York Herald Tribune. Certainly the Clinton years gave the president's defenders ample opportunity to denounce "tabloid trash." And for more than 40 years conservative audiences have yelped with delight at ritual denunciations of the New York Times. Even Spiro Agnew in his 1969 acid, anti-establishment and alliterative attacks on the TV networks singled out "a small group of men, numbering no more than a dozen anchorman, commentators and executive producers."
By Walter Shapiro
Politics Daily
May 1, 2009

Here in the Real World They’re Shutting Detroit Down
In 1973, OPEC’s embargo tripled the price of oil. GM failed to respond quickly enough to the consumer’s sudden demand for fuel-efficient cars. At the same time, the Japanese with their then superior, lean manufacturing techniques stepped into the vacuum, gaining a foothold in the North American car market that they have continued to expand. Ironically, thirty years later the very same inability to shift product offerings during a spike in oil prices precipitated GM’s current difficulties.
By Morley Winograd and Michael D. Hais
NewGeography.com
April 29, 2009

Obama's outreach pays off in first 100 days
In his first 100 days as president, Barack Obama has marshaled a potent array of political weapons to keep himself at the top of public opinion polls - a blend of skillful communication and messaging, unprecedented voter outreach and the creative use of technical, youth-oriented organizing tools never before seen in American presidential politics. If that arsenal sounds familiar, it's no surprise: President Obama and his team are reaching for the same weapons that propelled candidate Obama's successful run to the White House, and they've gotten quicker on the draw.
By Carla Marinucci, and Joe Garofoli
San Francisco Chronicle
April 29, 2009

Will Work for Meaning
In a recent USA Today piece, Michael Hais, who co-authored Millennial Makeover: MySpace, YouTube, and the Future of American Politics with Morley Winograd, said, "Other generations were reared to be more individualistic. This civic generation has a willingness to put aside some of their own personal advancement to improve society." The article also nods to the overwhelmingly positive response of Millennials to Obama, and their answer to his call for national service.
On Faith
The Faith Divide: what brings us together and drives us apart
Will Work for Meaning
By Eboo Patel
Washington Post
April 17, 2009

Authors Speak On Internet’s Power
In March 2008, Winograd and Hais published their book Millennial Makeover: MySpace, YouTube, and the Future of American Politics, which accurately predicted a win for democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama after years of republican domination. The two authors cited statistics yesterday stating that 80 percent of Obama’s winning margin was composed of youthful “Millennial” voters, whose proficiency with Web-based social-networking sites allowed candidates to mobilize followers while also allowing followers to mobilize each other.
By Gulus Emre
Harvard Crimson
April 16, 2009

More Than Half of Americans Using Internet for Political News and Activities
A report released today by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, based on a survey of 2,254 adults interviewed, confirms what's more than apparent to the online masses: The Web is changing our political life. And it's not just affecting how people consume political information — it's also impacting how they interact with the political process. The report signals the undeniable emergence of what Lee Rainie, Pew Internet's director, called a growing "participatory class" in an interview days before the November election.
The Clickocracy
By Jose Antonio Vargas
Washington Post
April 15, 2009

'Civic generation' rolls up sleeves in record numbers
Young adults who grew up in the shadow of the 9/11 attacks and saw the wreckage of Hurricane Katrina are volunteering at home and abroad in record numbers. The generation that learned in school to serve as well as to read and write, the Millennials were the first global Internet explorers even as they pioneered social networking for favorite causes at home.
By Andrea Stone
USA Today
April 14, 2009

Get Ready For Wiki-Government
"Given Millennials’ values and behaviors and the technologies they love, the thrust of efforts by the Obama administration to reshape governance in the United States will involve the creation of open structures attempting to maximize the number who participate in policy-making. Dispersed participatory structures, such as Google or Wikipedia, are brands Millennials think of when asked to name information sources they trust. It is from these models that Millennials will draw their inspiration for reshaping America’s governing processes."
By Morley Winograd and Michael Hais
GSA Office of Citizen Services and Communications
Intergovernmental Solutions Newsletter
Spring, 2009
Click here to Download pdf of entire newsletter

Obama turns left
The U.S. President is putting the state in charge of the economy in the land of free enterprise. Are the 'best and brightest' up to the task?
"There are now more Millennials than boomers. To be precise, there are 17 million more people born between 1982 and 2003 living in the United States than there are people who were born between 1946 and 1964. There are 27 million more Millennials than there are Gen-Xers, the generation in between. The Millennials constitute the largest generation in American history. Millennials identify as Democrats over Republicans by 55 to 30 per cent; in one poll 80 per cent identified with Mr. Obama, and only 10 per cent identified generically with Republicans. The boomers, who were raised to believe in ideals — hence the culture wars of the past 50 years — taught their children civic responsibility, says Morley Winograd, co-author of Millennial Makeover, a book that explores the phenomenon. "
By John Ibbitson
Globe and Mail
April 4, 2009

Lessons from Detroit: 10 Years Later, the Overhaul of the Domestic Auto Industry and Its Parallels with the Republicans' Problem
the current debate over whether to save our domestic auto industry has revealed some starkly different views about the future of manufacturing in America among economists, elected officials and corporate executives. There are many disagreements about solutions to the Big Three’s current financial difficulties, but the more fundamental debate is whether the industry should bend to the will of the government’s and taxpayers' priorities or serve only the needs of the companies’ customers and their shareholders.
By Morley Winograd and Michael Hais
NDN Millennial Makeover Blog
March 30, 2009



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