The X Factor   

J onathan Karl may be the designated Generation Xer of CNN 's campaign coverage, but he's hardly a slacker.

Karl joins CNN as a special correspondent. His new beat covers the issues and concerns of the youth vote, a constituency all candidates are anxious to court as there will be 6 million more 18- to 29-year-old voters registered in this year's election than in 1992.

Karl, 28, didn't exactly ease into his new gig. When he reported for his first day of work at CNN, he was immediately sent off to Iowa to cover the state's caucuses. Two hours after arriving he filed his first broadcast report.

Karl says he's out to prove that Generation Xers care about more than which candidate prefers boxers over briefs. "I want to cover legitimate news, issues that concern younger voters," he says. "I hope to force the focus on future issues..like where the country is going to be in 10, twenty, thirty years."

Karl may still qualify as part of the youth vote, but he's no journalistic rookie. He covered the Pataki/Cuomo gubernatorial race for the New York Post , where he was an investigative reporter, and has also written for The New Republic as a reporter/researcher. His first book, "The Right to Bear Arms: The Rise of America's New Militias," was published last year.

Karl says the switch from print to broadcast hasn't intimidated him, though the demands of providing 30-second news reports have proven to be a challenge. "It's really fast-paced," he says. "The deadlines are harder than in daily newspaper reporting."

But he says the pressure works to his advantage. "You can be a lot more creative because you can do so much with sight and sound that you simply can't do with print," he says. "It's really just a matter of learning how to maximize the power of the medium."