The news is that teens want more of it

London teenagers are enjoying serious news, and wait for it, in the last few weeks they have been getting it from an old-style newspaper.
Surely that goes against the grain of everything we have heard about the “google generation”, and against everything we have been told about how the internet is destroying newspapers and the reading habit?
What has changed? In London at any rate it was the decision by the Evening Standard to be distributed free. The Evening Standard is almost an old-style paper quality paper with breaking news, a focus on what’s on in London and some very good analysis of economics and business. And youngsters are making a bee-line for it. I see them reading it on the buses and trains every day.
While I was visiting a London student residence this week, one of the students walked into the kitchen saying, “has anyone got the Evening Standard?”
I was genuinely surprised. Most young people rarely see a newspaper close up, let alone ask for one. Their parents no longer take a “daily” (how quaint that sounds), so they no longer see a newspaper in the house.
“My mum and dad used to have a paper delivered. It was the Daily Mail and I would take a look at it so I had a general idea of what was going on,” one boy told me. “Now they don’t get the paper anymore.” When I ask where they get their news from, he shrugged.
Ask a group of teens emerging from the underground with the Evening Standard and you find that they appreciate knowing what is going on. They read celebrity gossip in that other free-sheet distributed in London ‘Metro’ but they actually described the Evening Standard a “must read” and “useful”. Perhaps as important its not yesterday's news, so they do not know about it from the TV.
And unlike that other celebrity-obsessed freesheet Metro, which they skim and then dump on bus and train seats, they bring the Evening Standard home to finish reading.
This is quite important news in itself, because contrary to popular belief it shows that they value newspapers. A study published last year by the Media Management Center at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University in the US found that teenagers (these were primarily Chicago teens) aren’t much into following serious news. The study which explores the online news experiences of teenagers found that “serious” political and economic news is not that important to teenagers.
On the internet, local news sites are just not on their radar screen. They don’t go out of the way to read news, relying on it popping up in front of them from internet portals and news aggregators. Other studies have shown that almost no teenager goes to a newspaper home page on the internet. If they access one of the major national newspapers at all, it is via a link to a particular article that someone has sent them.
Other studies have shown that they rely on news to come to them through links posted by friends, for example on Facebook, so they are news conduits as well.
Even if they profess not to be interested in news, teenagers are “interestable”, the Chicago study reported. “Researchers repeatedly heard the phrase "I will read it if it catches my eye" (their italics)”
Once interested they read on and talking about it can be fun. “It gives me something to talk about,” was a common response to the Chicago survey.
No one is suggesting that teenagers are about to go out and spend pocket money on newspapers any time soon. But the Chicago study suggested that news widgets for Facebook and mobile phones might find an interested audience among young people. Even that is a breakthrough. It goes a long way from the common belief that teenagers don’t want serious news at all.
It may be a long while before newspapers begin to produce teenager-friendly ways of delivering content. They are far more worried at the general decline in readership and finding ways to fund decent journalism when no one wants to pay for news. But there is a realisation that today’s teenagers will be the news consumers of tomorrow. The news-for-free dilemma is another issue, and an important one, but it is not the same as saying young people do not want ‘proper’ news.
The realisation is growing, particularly among politicians that news is important for democracy, and that has made the decline of serious news (not just newspapers) that informs and analyses, a matter that goes beyond media industry profits.
Unesco has been collaborating with the newspaper publishers’ World Association of Newspapers to get newspapers into schools in many parts of the world. Last month the UN’s Education, Science and Cultural Organisation Unesco held a major conference to encourage teachers to incorporate media literacy in their classrooms, a recognition that news is important and in the internet age, may not necessarily happen of its own accord.
The French Government is giving every French 18 year old a year’s free subscription to a newspaper of their choice. Announced by President Sarkozy earlier this year as a way of luring young people away from the internet, the newspapers cover the cost of the free copies while the government pays for the free delivery.
In Malaysia a philanthropist is providing free newspaper subscriptions to local schools for a year. They have the right idea. As the advent of the free Evening Standard has shown quite clearly, get a quality newspaper in front of young people, and they will read it and appreciate it.