However, there is a positive side to this: young people are referred to as “grazers” –  if they come across something that interests them they will read it. This is a newspaper-friendly attribute according to Michael Smith, executive director of the Media Management Center and Readership Institute at Northwestern University.

Smith also says that teens prefer to do all their reading in one spot. “The news sites that teens most value are like the newspaper: a handy package with everything in one place,” Smith says. Another newspaper-friendly attribute.

The problem for newspapers, of course, is how to get young people to move from the portals to their sites, or better yet, their printed editions.

One solution, used by Aftonbladet, a national Swedish daily, was to create a website that was, essentially, an electronic version of the Berliner format – all the content is on one page.

"It's the No. 1 Internet site for us," says Sonja Magdalenic, a high-school-aged Swede. "The fact that this site is so easy to overview is the main reason that I and my friends view this site several times daily."

However, there are more problems to solve. Anja Pasquay, press officer for the German newspaper publishers association known as BDZV, points to a social problem: "Today, for a 15-year-old in Germany, reading a newspaper is not cool." In 1986, 72.6 percent of Germans aged 14 through 19 read the paper. In 2006, that number had fallen to 47.6 percent.

Alvaro Avila Arrieta, co-editor of La Revista, suggests changing the language to something that engages young people more. Avila Arrieta uses the phrase: "The president announced today..." as an example. This phrase is fine for adult readers, but young readers are not engaged by this type of language; to them its boring.

Paul Farrell, group marketing manager for The Irish Times, also sends out an important warning about trying too hard to be cool: "You can end up looking like a granddad wearing sneakers."

Robert Barnard, founder of the Canadian research firm D-Code, says that research indicates that young readers prefer youth content that is spread throughout an entire paper, as opposed to having a youth section. Barnard uses the analogy of the children’s table at a family get-together: "They see youth sections as being for much younger people."

Editor and Publisher