The AP's Phil Elliott Wants His MTV

And he will get it!

When Elliott co-moderates "Closing Arguments: A Presidential Super Dialogue" this Saturday on MTV.

From the release:

LOS ANGELES/NEW YORK – January 31, 2008 – MySpace, the world’s most popular social network, and MTV, the leading global youth brand, along with the Associated Press, today announced that Dr. Ron Paul (www.mysapce.com/ronpaul2008) will join Senator Hillary Clinton (www.myspace.com/hillaryclinton) and Governor Mike Huckabee (www.myspace.com/mikehuckabeeforpresident) for “Closing Arguments: A Presidential Super Dialogue.” The event will offer candidates a final opportunity to actively engage the highly-coveted youth voting bloc just before Super Tuesday, when more than 20 states will hold their primaries and caucuses. “Closing Arguments” is the next installment of MySpace and MTV’s ground-breaking Presidential Dialogue Series (www.myspace.com/election2008) and will take place live Saturday, February 2, 2008 at 6 PM ET and offer audiences an unprecedented number of options, including on-air, online, radio and mobile, to tune-in and put their candid, unfiltered questions forth to front running candidates. The Associated Press will distribute a live feed and on-demand highlights of the Dialogue to the 1,800 media sites in its Online Video Network; nearly 600 of which are local TV, newspaper or radio sites in states with Super Tuesday primaries.

WashingtonPost.com political reporter Chris Cillizza and MTV News Correspondents Gideon Yago and Sway Calloway will be joined by Associated Press Writer Philip Elliott as moderators.

It looks to us like our friend from New Hampshire is a rising star in the Gang of 500.

So all you budding political operatives should get to know him (but just remember that he "hates everybody", which keeps him fair).

And please don't hold his friendship with us against him.

Because that's not fair.

Congratulations my friend!

Well Done MTV/MySpace/John Edwards

The WaPo's Chris Cillizza chats with fellow moderator and MTV V-J SuChin Pak before the MTV/MySpace candidate forum this afternoon on the University of New Hampshire campus.

Noted: We don't normally "shoot" press, but MTV told us that we would be unable to take pictures of John Edwards while the forum was going on. So...

Edwards is the first '08 candidate to participate in the hour-long forum, which mixes audience questions with questions from the (far) larger MySpace online community.

All in real time. Live streamed on the web. Taped to play at 7pm EST tonight on MTV.

The debate format worked well. "Hip" debate staging aside.

And the audience questions were, for the most part, excellent. And unfiltered.

There might be hope for the next generation after all.

But only if the next generation realizes that they have to get their butts into the voting booth on election day "en masse" before campaign (political) folks will truly take their concerns seriously.

Because online chatter and hype doesn't count. Only the voting booth does.