Blame our generation!

[levertovfan]

So I've been to two different events at the Central Library where there were a lot of people baby boom age or older blaming our generation or younger (generations X, Y, and Z) for changes in literacy-related services. The first was an event discussing the future of the publishing industry, featuring laments that my generation does not read; the second was a class last night discussing changes in the newspaper industry locally and nationally. The class featured one former Pioneer Press writer and one former and one current Star Tribune writer. Nationally, compared to older adults, the percentage of 32-25 year olds who read the newspaper is dropping, and the percentage of 18-24 year olds who read the newspaper is dropping even more. The Star Tribune has changed their look and their content to try to appeal to a younger audience, with the net result that they are alienating their core readership of older readers and seem not to really be attracting younger readers. (An additional element of that change is that the investment company that recently bought the Strib has done away with a huge percentage of its journalistic staff, so there is substantially less reporting going on.)

The Star Tribuners talked about a three hour long meeting that they had been forced to sit through on market research. The Star Tribune identified five audience segments, and chose to focus on only a few of them. They figured that they could ignore their core readership, the middle-aged and elderly who get the newspaper daily, because, in the words of a boss at the Strib, "they couldn't beat them off with a stick." They also figured that they could ignore the "elite readership," which they defined as people who got their national news from the New York Times and turned to the Strib for local news, because they were such a small percentage of the readership, about 5%. And instead, they decided to concentrate on attracting the market segment that gets their news from a wide variety of sources, which is disproportionately young people. In particular, they wanted to attract young women.

So they held a bunch of market research sessions on young people, and young women in particular. They discovered as a result that young people want news that is relevant to their life. As a result: the "experience" newspaper, with one parts information that young people will find relevant to their lives to two parts content. However, in the words of one of the reporters, if you are a young person and don't already know where to go in the Twin Cities to get laid, an article on the subject isn't going to help.

The market research also discovered that their favored market niche, young women, want entertainment news, aka news on Britney Spears et al and updates on their favorite television shows. Alas for the Strib and the people who have altered the newspaper to reflect those preferences, if young women want entertainment news, they will most easily satisfy that need by buying magazines and tabloids in the check-out line, not the newspaper. So the Strib is driving away it's core constituency in order to try to appeal to people who probably won't really read it anyway.

One of the themes throughout the presentation was that newspaper editors nationally have learned that presenting controversy will not play well to their corporate owners, so a lot of journalists who would otherwise do hard-hitting journalism have learned to avoid it because it won't get printed. One of the points made by a generation X guy in the audience is that he gets his news from the Daily Show because it is willing to actually present controversy.

All of this makes me dour at my own generation, for casting me in such a negative light, and dour at the Boomer generation, for not being sufficiently aware of the situational factors that have led to changes in my generation's reading patterns and then blaming my generation for these developments.

Comments

[alirose.livejournal.com]

I don't know about the whole "our generation doesn't read" thing. Ethan and I don't read the newspaper, we read news online from places like the BBC and New York Times websites. It's the same news, but it doesn't my hands all inky and it doesn't kill trees. Did the Star Trib people mention the web at all?

Although I think that if you can't get your celeb gossip fix while waiting in line at the grocery store, and you actually buy those things then you have a problem, so clearly many people have a problem... Maybe it is as bad as they say.

See you tomorrow!

[levertovfan.livejournal.com]

The Star Trib people did talk a lot about the web and how many more young people get their news from the web, radio, and television these days. However, they said that most young people using the web weren't using it to read news but rather to do social networking, look at dating sites, get sports statistics (arguably news..), download music, etc.

[halfsparkle.livejournal.com]

I second the comment about the Daily Show. There was a time when that was where most of my news came from, and I looked at it this way: all news/media outlets are biased in some way, and you have to know how to filter the bias if you want actual news. Personally, I think newspapers in print are dying out and will likely be gone within our lifetimes. I would never subscribe to a paper when I can get the same news online because it's an easy and cheap way to save trees.

Everyone I know reads a shitton of books, and I'm trying to find time to read more myself, because I'm rather embarrassed that I don't read as much as them. Though to be honest, that's because when I pick up a book, if it's any good, I neglect important stuff like eating, sleeping, and paying attention at work until I'm finished. :-)

From my mother's experiences with agents and editors for her novels, I'd say the publishing industry is actually doing itself in. It's a money-making enterprise, pure and simple, and to that end, it's very leery of taking a chance on a new author unless it can pigeonhole that author into one of several easily marketable categories: mystery, fantasy, sci-fi. Right now, writers of fantasy are going to have an easier time because the Harry Potter readers are looking for the next thing, and publishers will be quick to shove similar books at them ("reminiscent of J.K. Rowling at her best!"). Writers like my mom, however, who simply do good literature, will always have a tough time, because it's hard to market her work. There's a new genre of "chick lit" emerging--fluffy, dumbed-down books meant to appeal to younger women who don't read much--and Mom's former agent tried to sell her work as such. Mom writes for intelligent people and called it quits with that agent. Everything I've seen so far about the publishing industry indicates that it's doing both authors and readers a disservice by promoting books based on genre rather than on quality. We're lucky that good writers can still get published, but we miss out on some subtler, more unusual work.

[coraythan.livejournal.com]

I like the newspaper. I was very dedicated to our highschool newspaper while I was in there, and I did help out the Carletonian at least a little bit while I was there. Also, getting my hands inky is one of the wonderful advantages of the paper newspaper. I like the newspaper in the same way I like used books, at least to an extent.

But yeah, sacrificing their seriousness and reporting seems like the exact wrong way to go for a newspaper. That's mostly what a newspaper is--if a newspaper isn't a city/area's main source for serious news and stuff . . . what the heck is it, then?