All politicians, in their private moments, moan about how hard it is to reach young voters, or rather potential voters, because the under 30s are notorious for their lack of voting.
And for their lack of engagement with traditional media, newspaper and TV bosses have very similar moans to those of politicians.
Charlie Kirk had somehow found the magic formula. He was able to use multimedia platforms to reach a mass youth audience and turn them on to politics and voting.
Conservative politics, Republican, and especially Trump voting.
Mr Kirk brewed up the secret sauce that had eluded politicians and media bosses the world over and that made him very valuable - especially to US President Donald Trump.
Mr Kirk was an enthusiastic early supporter of Trump. He had started out as an 18-year-old fan of the Tea Party faction of the Republican party, seeking smaller government and lower taxes.
By the time his life was cut short at the age of 31, he had become one of the leading intellectual lights of MAGA faction that had propelled Mr Trump to the White House.
Last summer I watched him in action at the Republican Party Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
He was outside the main venue, broadcasting in the open air in front of a crowd, pretty much like he was doing yesterday at Utah Valley University, on the edge of the city of Provo.
I wandered over to see what all the fuss was about.
He struck me as a skilful broadcaster, utterly at ease and a master of the medium of radio and podcasting.
He was interviewing guests, taking phone-ins and most of all talking to members of the crowd that surrounded his stage.
I couldn't figure out the blend in the secret sauce, but all my political and media senses told me I was in the presence of a fresh new voice who had honed a way of connecting with an under 30 audience.
The subjects were heavy, but he had a lightness about him and the way he talked to people – friendly and not condescending. You wanted to keep listening.
There wasn't a Republican politician in the US who didn’t want to be on his show.
Mr Kirk had a prime spot in the campus that was the Republican National Convention.
His imitators - hordes of them - were in a second hall, a college basketball arena, beside the main venue. 'Media Alley’ they called it.
I have never seen so many podcasting studios in my life. All of them festooned with microphones, cameras lights and constantly talking hosts.
Guests wandered from pod to pod. Donald Trump Jr was doing the rounds when I popped in.
This was the conservative media ecosystem that Charlie Kirk had helped to spawn.
The media iceberg below the surface that delivered far more ears and eyeballs to the Trump campaign than Kamala Harris’ traditional media "visible tip of the iceberg" route.
The Trumps had spotted Mr Kirk’s talent years earlier.
Eric Trump told a tale last night on Sean Hannity on Fox News of meeting him ten years ago.
"I remember when Charlie walked into the Trump Organisation. He was 21 years old. He walked into our conference room, and I met him for the first time. And man, the kid was larger than life.
"I mean, he was so far beyond his age. I mean, what he created - at that point, he had a couple chapters. Turning Point was in its infancy.
"They had absolutely no funding, and yet, he spoke about this big dream of creating this incredible organisation and inspiring millions and millions of kids and really redirecting the whole political conversation all across youth across the country. I mean, what's a bigger kind of goal than that," Mr Trump said.
He added: "And he did it, and I watched him over that ten-year period of time, and he was truly one of these great forces of nature.
"He became a dear friend. He became an incredible friend to me. He became an incredible friend to Don. He became an incredible friend to my father, Lara, our entire family, every one of us."
His wife, Lara, the former chair of the Republican Convention, was among a number of Republicans who said Mr Kirk had what it takes to go all the way.
They were convinced he could have become president one day.
Perhaps via the vice president's office. Mr Kirk has been credited with convincing the Trumps that JD Vance was a suitable candidate to be vice president.
He convinced them that Mr Vance - originally an anti-Trumper who compared him to Hitler - had changed utterly and genuinely had converted to MAGA.
The prospect of a Vance-Kirk presidential election ticket in 2028 was dream ticket for some working in the White House, the VP job being Kirks apprenticeship leading to a run in 2036 - the dream of MAGA dominance, achieved by two strong communicators.
As well as his online media, Mr Kirk had several books to his name - again aimed at the younger audience.
The blurb from his 2020 book ‘The MAGA Doctrine’ gives a flavour.
"The movement that brought Donald Trump to the White House has better ideas than the old right or the new left. It's time that the rest of America started listening.
"The Tea Party began as a protest for patriots who feared big government. President Trump has become a hero for patriots who are against ‘Big Everything’.
"Fed up with Silicon Valley, the media, liberal higher education, the military-industrial complex, Twitter mobs, swamp monsters, big pharma, out-of-control prosecutors, and gun-grabbing fascists, ordinary Americans miss the days when America cared about rule of the people, by the people, and for the people.
"Remember when you didn't feel bombarded on all sides by coastal billionaires and their government stooges? ‘The MAGA Doctrine’ urges an overdue restoration of self-rule by a populace long taken for granted by its rulers."
It struck a chord with young voters.
They came over to Trump, not massively, but enough to swing key states in a tight election.
Joe Biden scooped up 60% of the under 30 votes in 2020, but in 2024 Kamala Harris could only manage 54%.
Not massive, but in an election where the gap between candidates was 1.5% it counted.
Particularly in the key battleground states, where Mr Kirk had worked the ground intensively for Mr Trump, especially on college campuses.
In Michigan, there was a 24% swing away from Ms Harris among the under 30s.
In Pennsylvania, the swing was 18% and in Wisconsin it was 15%.
290,000 votes going the other way in those three states would have delivered the White House to Ms Harris. Kirk counted.
There was talk of giving him a cabinet post. But he was probably more use to the Trump administration just doing what he was doing, growing the Trump brand and conservative politics among the new entrants to the under thirty cohort.
But an assassin’s bullet ended Ms Kirk’s life.
That a close ally, a family friend, had been shot at a rally was shocking enough for President Trump.
However, the manner of Mr Kirk’s death also recalled for Mr Trump his own very narrow escape from an assassin’s bullet at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania last year.
It was a week after that shocking incident of political violence that Mr Trump appeared at the Republican Convention in Milwaukee.
Mr Kirk was one of the speakers at the convention, as well as doing his radio and podcast shows outside.
Political violence and his own miraculous escape were on Mr Trump’s mind when he paid tribute to Mr Kirk in a video message posted on his Truth Social platform overnight.
But while other politicians had appealed for a dialling down of political rhetoric in the charged atmosphere following this assassination, Mr Trump didn't oblige.
"It's long past time for all Americans and the media to confront the fact that violence and murder are the tragic consequence of demonising those with whom you disagree, day after day, year after year, in the most hateful and despicable way possible.
Watch: Charlie Kirk supporters say killing is an attack on free speech
"For years, those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world's worst mass murderers and criminals.
"This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we're seeing in our country today, and it must stop right now," Mr Trump said.
He added: "My administration will find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity and to other political violence, including the organisations that fund it and support it.
"As well as those who go after our judges, law enforcement officials and everyone else who brings order to our country.
"From the attack on my life in Butler, Pennsylvania last year, which killed a husband and father, to the attacks on ICE agents to the vicious murder of a health care executive in the streets of New York, to the shooting of House majority leader Steve Scalise and three others, radical and political violence has hurt too many innocent people and taken too many lives."
But Democrats have been victims of political violence too in the past few months.
The speaker of the house in Minnesota and her husband were murdered by a MAGA supporter who went on to shoot another member of the state house.
The governor’s mansion in Pennsylvania was set alight in an apparent attack on Democrat Josh Shapiro.
There is a tide of political violence here, and it really does need toning down.
But within minutes of Mr Kirk’s death, social media reverted to type, with the worst sort of comments being posted by the ignorant and the malevolent alike.
And a generation of young Americans is left to process what has just happened to one of their big political figures - the one who spoke to their concerns, in their language, on their media.
