Young people and newspapers

Only 43 percent of all Americans say that losing their local newspapers would hurt their community "a lot,"  according to a recent Pew poll and only  33 percent say they would miss the newspaper if it were gone. http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1147/newspapers-struggle-public-not-concerned

Those numbers go up with regular newspapers, 56 percent of whom say that the loss of the newspaper would hurt the community and 55 percent of whom say they would miss their newspapers. But even those numbers are astonishingly low.

I used the poll in my journalism class and asked two students to represent newspaper readers and non-readers. Sadly, there were a lot more non-readers than readers although several students said they read the newspaper online.

The young woman representing non-readers is a sassy and smart young woman in my class who wants to go into magazine journalism.  She just came right out and said that newspapers are boring and that she is a visual person and she sees all those gray columns as really boring. She also said that she's not that concerned about news that doesn't affect her.

I was heartened that the other students questioned her closely about her news consumption. They asked her if she reads blogs? No. Does she watch TV news? No. One young woman even asked, "How can you make informed decisions as a citizen if you're not informed yourself?" Thank you! 

The young man representing newspaper readers didn't put up the greatest defense of newspapers. He said he reads them because he has poor vision and can't read them online. But it was clear he does keep informed on all the news.

A few days later I talked to them about how disturbed I was by the young woman's comments.  I told the students I would like them to find some way to engage with the news, whether it's the radio or TV or blogs.

"What do you do to get your news?" the same young woman asked. I told them I read The New York Times and listen to NPR and I also watch the Today Show and Jon Stewart.  So I'm not a good example of a local newspaper subscriber either unless you count the weekly. I stopped subscribing to the local daily, The Trenton Times, when they dropped my column.

I don't know how to get young people to read the newspaper. I give them quizzes, I have them do weekly briefings on the news. But many of them clearly still aren't paying much attention to the news and clearly a few of them are paying no attention at all.  As for getting them to read the newspaper, it's a losing battle. They can't afford to subscribe to the newspaper and even the best of them get their newspapers online.

So it seems that both the poll and our informal class discussion underlines once again how very bleak the future of newspapers is if future journalists aren't reading the newspaper. Clearly, the next generation will be getting their news online if they're even getting the news. That makes me sad but it seems that fighting that trend is a battle that can't be won.