Part 2: 5 key lessons from Generation Y to newspapers

Here's Part 2 of a piece submitted to us by Chris McGillion, former Editorial Page Editor of the Sydney Morning Herald. He currently coordinates the journalism program at Charles Sturt University in Australia.

In the following, he outlines five key points presented by some of his journalism students to top execs in the newspaper industry, who it seems would be better off heeding their advice :

Also read Part 1: The value of the journalism graduate.

Last year the Pacific Area Newspaper Publishers' Association (Panpa) invited five of my journalism students from Charles Sturt University (CSU) to give a keynote presentation at its annual conference in Melbourne on what their generation wanted from the newspaper of the future.

Newspaper decision-makers have access to the latest statistics and trends in audience research as a matter of course. But they rarely if at all have five representatives of Generation Y - the readership base of the future - holding court without interruption for ninety minutes on what they want in a newspaper and why.

My students made five major points. First, while not discounting a continuing (if diminishing) market for hard-copy newspapers, they argued that the "newspaper' of the future would have to be web-based in order to attract sustained patronage from their generation.

This is consistent with the results of annual surveys of first year communication students at CSU (200 in all of whom almost half are journalism students). These results show an increasing trend toward accessing news online (34.7% did so at least weekly in 2007) and decreasing hardcopy newspaper consumption (down to 41% at least weekly in 2007).

Further evidence of our students' attachment to web-based technology is daily usage of Hotmail accounts (60.7% in 2007), the Google search engine (72.7%), and social networking websites such as MySpace (33.3%).
 
Second, the student presenters argued that future web-based news sites would have to play a "gateway" role rather than the traditional "gatekeeper" role. Put simply, young people these days don't like to be told what news is or what they should consider important: personalised, tailored content will be the hallmark of Generation Y's media consumption.

Another side of this cultural shift is that Generation Y doesn't like to be told what to buy: they will certainly follow trends and adopt brands but both must be - or must appear to be - peer-recommended (and remember we are dealing with people who may have up to 400 "friends" on their social networking websites).

This shift has important implications for advertisers and thus the way media organizations fund their operations.

Third, the most popular news sites will allow for a degree of interactivity. Young people don't only want to know what's happening in the outside world: they also want the outside world to know what they think about what's happening and even, increasingly, to be the ones defining and providing whatever it is that is happening.

Fourth, reputable media organisations remain highly valued. This seems to be a function of information overload and the consequent need to filter what's "out there" together with attitudes ingrained from parents (and reinforced by teachers and public figures) about reliability and quality. 

Fifth, and most important, Generation Y will change the economics of the newspaper industry. In an internet age, young people do not see the need to pay for information.  But nor do they have the same concerns about privacy as their parents and grandparents. Their's, after all, is the "Big Brother' generation whose private lives have become the stuff of public consumption.

The students at Panpa then unveiled their idea for a proto-type web-based "newspaper". It was designed as a gateway to the internet: it allowed readers to pre-sort the news they received, to access email and other social networking sites, and to provide their own "news" stories, comment and photos. It also offered free mobile phones and/or phone accounts in exchange for personal information which the site host then sold on to advertisers.

I had worked closely with the students for three months on this presentation. Sitting in the audience of 300 or so (mostly middle-aged male) editors and publishers, I heard enough grumbling about what the students were saying to fear that the presentation was a PR disaster for the journalism course I run. "Free newspapers and mobile phones!" I heard one editor complain under his breath. "What else do these people want?"

Then, one by one, three international experts on the subject of trends in the newspaper industry - representing IFRA, INMA, and News Digital Media - were invited to respond to the students' presentation. Their message was clear, simple - and reassuring for me at least: in no uncertain terms they each told the audience that they ignored what my students told them to their peril.


Chris McGillion coordinates the journalism program at Charles Sturt University, Australia (cmcgillion@csu.edu.au).

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Stay tuned, as we will shortly be resuming our 'Future of Journalism' series with interviews from editors at The New York Times and the Financial Times.