Bringing Young People to the News

There is an interesting top ten list I ran that addresses the slow bleed of readers from traditional media sources and poses ideas for pulling young people more into the news media.

Amusingly enough, the whole thing amounts to a 151 page PDF report. I don't think I'm alone in arguing that a 151 page report would be mistake number one, but I digress.

The first recommendation is for journalists who write more in-depth complex stories to provide contextual analysis so readers understand the political, historical, or financial implications on the topic being addressed.

Secondly, they recommend a kind of "wisdom journalism." Wouldn't that be nice? Wisdom journalism is a specific kind of reporting where a journalist is an expert in the topic he or she is covering and can give a more active, interpretive approach to the story. Amazingly enough, the report is saying young people value the kind of old school journalism that the world became accustomed to with Murrow, Bradlee, Margaret Fuller, and Nellie Bly. This is in direct contrast to the hyper-graphic super flashy hologram iNews that I feel like we see on the 24-hour cable crap.

The third is to personalize the news. Their examples are amazon and ebay which allows us to personalize everything that we want or need so they ask why shouldn't the news be that way? I don't know how I feel about this. Basically, this sounds like the blogosphere kind of news, and maybe that's what they think news should emulate. I read Kos or HuffPo because I'm choosing to read my news from a perspective that is more personalized for my agenda. But I value the lack of personalized preference in sites like CNN or the NYTimes. They deliver the news, if I wanted the spin I'd read my blogs.

Four and five are about redesigning sites and formats to make things hip and sexier, and I'll agree streamlining presentation is important. One of my greatest problems in my job now is the constant fight between the "old guard" who continue to insist that websites offer press releases, documents, and various other things via PDF. I don't think I'm alone in rolling my eyes when I click a link and watch my browser begin to download something.

Six is to make the news more civic and community focused. I think this is code for doing happier stories on good civic things that are happy or community events that are more localized and impact people's daily lives.

Seven is where it becomes art: Report on stories about young people. It seems like the only stories I hear about young people via the mainstream news are the ones that diss our generation or they're the stories that we've worked collectively in the youth movement to garner attention around for weeks. Stories about young people or issues that matter to young people give a reason to watch or read beyond that the news is relying on the topic and without a "wisdom journalism" what else is there?

Eight is to begin raising children with the news so it becomes part of the culture of young people. This is a pretty decent point - we never had CNN on TV growing up in classrooms. I was a sophomore in high school before I was in a classroom that had the daily newspaper. I loved that my college had free papers for those with student ID's. Everything from the local to the NYTimes, it was fantastic. I hope these are more accessible in schools.

Nine is providing more sharing features which references allowing access to share stories on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. Any site that doesn't do this now is simply stupid. When we read something important we share it with our friends online, the easier the news makes it the better.

Finally, they encourage thinking about new approaches to TV news. This is delicious (emphasis mine):

"The network evening newscast is not a popular news platform among young people, and its market share will continue to decrease in the years ahead. Though cable news is much more popular, it too is losing ground to the Internet and will continue to. Television news is generally less dense than printed or online content per minute spent by consumers, and cable news is plagued by well-known problems. Yet it remains a powerful medium thanks to its visual strength and nearly universal penetration. Television outlets should focus on online content production and select particular topics to highlight in-depth on-air. Current.tv is an encouraging but limited example of this idea in action."

I hope we can save the news industry - I mean the real news industry. If Faux died I wouldn't lose any sleep, but quality Pulitzer style journalism deserves to be saved and its an endangered species. If these few tweaks can help them make the transition into the new world then a blessing on the house of news. The ones resistant to evolve will lose.