World newspapers unite to win back youth

Posted by Jean Yves Chainon on February 13, 2007 at 12:42 PM

As newspapers long for past circulations and their ‘missing audience’, young readers, the 7th World Young Reader Conference, will be held in Washington, D.C., from 25 to 28 March. The conference will gather a panel of experts from Newspapers in Education (NIE) to fight back newspaper’s decline among young readers and in schools.

Apart from NIE, the conference will examine the full range of strategies that newspapers are using to attract the young to newspapers, both in print and online.

“Thanks to recent research, we know that investing in quality NIE programmes will improve student performance, encourage better citizenship and nurture the newspaper reading habit," said Aralynn McMane, Director of Young Readership Development for the World Association of Newspapers, one of the event's organizers.

The panel will include Jim Abbot, Vice President of the Newspaper Association of America Foundation, Lynne Cahill, NIE expert at the West Australian Newspaper in Perth, Australia, and Gerard van der Weijden, a Dutch NIE expert and creator of the international Reading Passport.

Simultaneous interpretation will be provided in English, French, German, and Spanish.

The 7th World Young Reader Conference is sponsored by, among others, leading US newspaper companies, including Schurz Communications Inc., Landmark Communications Inc., The Washington Post, Cox Newspapers,Inc. and Gannett Company Inc.

Source: World Association of Newspapers