“Let’s attract the young audience”
Gosh, we have used the old line (a cliché, really) ‘we must attract young readers’ for as long as I have been in this business.
In the 70s, newspaper editors believed the formula was to give them more entertainment news.
In the 80s, the idea was to do more with trendy lifestyle topics.
In the 90s, definitely more tech news.
By the start of the 2000s the rush was in to engage the young ones, usually older than 20 since those younger than that have always been the unattainable dream. How to engage the young, however, has been and continues to be the challenge.
Not that the young people are not engaged with news. Indeed, they are. One reason for their greater engagement with news is the fact that the youngsters live attached to their phone, for example, so whether they want to or not, news comes their way, mostly via social media. The opportunities have never been greater to attract the young. Retaining them is a different story.
Why millennial media are not quite there
Yet, in spite of the millennials’ engagement with news, it continues to be a challenge to tap into this segment of the audience.
First, let’s define the millennials, those born between 1981 and 1996.
The facts about millennials:
–Millennials are about to becoming the largest living adult generation in 2019.
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/03/01/millennials-overtake-baby-boomers/
–They are tech savvy:
More than nine-in-ten Millennials (92%) own smartphones, compared with 85% of Gen Xers (those who turn ages 38 to 53 this year), 67% of Baby Boomers (ages 54 to 72) and 30% of the Silent Generation (ages 73 to 90), according to a new analysis of Pew Research Center data. Similarly, the vast majority of Millennials (85%) say they use social media. For instance, significantly larger shares of Millennials have adopted relatively new platforms such as Instagram (52%) and Snapchat (47%) than older generations have.
–Their consumption of news
This will surprise you:
When it comes to technology’s influence on America’s young adults, reading is not dead – at least not the news. When asked whether one prefers to read, watch or listen to their news, younger adults are far more likely than older ones to opt for text, and most of that reading takes place on the web.
Overall, more Americans prefer to watch their news (46%) than to read it (35%) or listen to it (17%), a Pew Research Center survey found earlier this year. But that varies dramatically by age. Those ages 50 and older are far more likely to prefer watching news over any other method: About half (52%) of 50- to 64-year-olds and 58% of those 65 and older would rather watch the news, while roughly three-in-ten (29% and 27%, respectively) prefer to read it. Among those under 50, on the other hand, roughly equal portions – about four-in-ten of those ages 18-29 and ages 30-49 – opt to read their news as opt to watch it.
Most of that reading among younger adults is through digital text rather than print.
Finding a niche with millennials
A recent piece in Digiday deal with the subject matter of factly, and reminds us of how difficult it is to tap into the specific market of millennials.
Suddenly, news needed to be quicker, video-and image-heavy and optimized for sharing (and mobile phone screens). It could live on a platform instead of a publisher’s website. It could be monetized, well, some way or other (that would be figured out later), and a whole new crop of millennial news purveyors was born.
These news purveyors, however, have not had a successful ride, or perhaps not as good as it was expected.
“I don’t think you can target a demo,” media analyst Bernard Gershon said. “I think you have to create a high-quality product, and then figure out ways to monetize that.”
The facts:
Take a look at the reach of news sites among 25-34-year-old internet users, and only three millennial-focused publishers crack the top 50. Just one – Insider Inc. – cracks the top 10. The next “millennial news” entry on the list, Mic, clocks in at 36, and it reaches just 2.6 percent of that age cohort, according to Comscore data.
This is at the core of a discussion I usually have during workshops with publishers and editors. It borders on the issue of “personalization” of content, something that I am not so sure about. While we have not heard so much about personalization in 2018, it is a question in every workshop. Should newspapers, especially those with mobile first strategies, pursue highly personalized products?
Not in my view. I think that we have an obligation to select content that is timely, relevant and interesting. However, not all content that fits into these categories is necessarily “sexy”. There are some stories each day that everyone needs to know. I refer to that as broccoli. Perhaps not as tasty as a banana/mango smoothie, but, nonetheless, information that is important to know, and that a good content manager will include as he/she curates information.
A good content menu offers both the broccoli and the smoothie.
But, back to the millennials: nobody is really sure of what these young renegades want to read. And, while I am no expert on the subject, I would dare say that many of the millennials I know and come in contact with (especially my students at Columbia University), truly like a lot of the same type of stories that I, a 71 year old, like to read. Just like I would hate to have a highly personalized package that caters to what 70 something want to consume, the millenial’s interests vary. True, they are probably more connected to social media, especially Instagram Tweeter and Snapchat, and technology ranks high in their content preference, but aside from that they like good investigative pieces, adore commentary and take well to video and podcasts.
But I like all those topics too. These are the themes that I like to have conversations about, regardless of the age of my intelocutors.
That is why I agree with my friend and Columbia colleague, Raju Narisetti, who was quoted int he Digiday article:
“There was a core misunderstanding of what makes for successful millennial journalism products,” said Narisetti, former CEO of Gizmodo Media Group and director of the Knight-Bagehot fellowship in economics and business journalism at Columbia University. “There was no place to create a community.”
The most successful millennial products, publisher or not, nurture conversations, Narisetti said, rather than blast information out at a passive audience. And while platforms like Facebook theoretically offered users a chance to connect with one another, those connections were harder for the publishers to capitalize on. “You can’t build a community on Snapchat or on Facebook,” Narisetti added. “That’s Facebook’s community.”
Rather than spend time creating millennial-specific products, publishers may do well to concentrate on creating high premium content with a more universal appeal. Those millennials are mature in their way of consuming information.
As for us 70 somethings, we get younger by the day. We like a good smoothie, but know the importance of broccoli.
TheMarioBlog post #2968