Back when I was in journalism school, I did a short video newsmagazine piece on that Pew survey showing that people who watched The Daily Show and The Colbert Report knew more about the news than people who got their news from mainstream sources. Long story short, it's because those audiences are made up of media "omnivores" who get their news from multiple sources, not just The Daily Show.
In any case, I profiled two political comedians as part of the story; one was conservative Robert A. George, and the other was liberal Jamie Kilstein, who went on to co-host Citizen Radio with Allison Kilkenny and was on the Conan O'Brien show last night:
Kilstein definitely isn't any less edgy or political than he was at the time, which is awesome. Not a lot of comedians on Conan making poignant jokes about the blowback effect of drone strikes.
