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Mon 19 Apr, 2004 11:34 pm
Edit: Moderator: Moved to general news. Please post general news in the general news forum.
Study: Teens Have Little 'Attachment' to Newspapers
By Jennifer Saba
Editors and Publishers
Published: April 19, 2004
NEW YORK On Tuesday, the Newspaper Association of American will release a study examining the emotional attachment that teenagers have to newspapers, says NAA Vice President of Readership Integration Randy Bennett.
For the most part, and this should come as no surprise, teens don't really have an emotional attachment to newspapers. The NIE (Newspapers in Education) program does a good job covering elementary schools and college students but there's a gaping hole when it comes time to reaching teens in high schools, says Bennett. "We want to communicate to the industry a better way to engage with teens."
Conducted by Stamford, Conn.-based North Castle Partners, a marketing research firm with an emphasis on teens, the study held a series of focus groups over a five-month period. Both Bennett and North Castle's founding partner Jon Iafeliece stress the research is qualitative, not quantitative. The study involved over 100 teens ages 15-19 from Stamford, Conn.; Seattle; Augusta, Ga.; and Memphis, Tenn.
"In our minds [teens] represent the biggest opportunities to affect long-term readership," Iafeliece says. He also notes that teens spend $175 billion a year. "The earlier you get to a group, the more likely they will carry on that habit for life."
The research breaks out findings in three ways: Content and format, strategic positioning and influencers.
In terms of content, teens are looking for short, concise articles and lots of bullet points. "They don't want the news dumbed down, they just want it more concise," Iafeliece says.
Teens look to their parents for lessons in respect and honesty. Furthermore, the research gives credence to the idea that if parents read newspapers, their children are more likely to read papers too. Papers should borrow from anti-drug campaigns that encourage parents to talk to their teens about reading papers, Iafeliece suggests.
Papers still have a ways to go in the eyes of teens as, overall, newspapers get a bad rap. Iafeliece recalls that when they showed pictures of teens reading newspapers during school, the focus groups tended to snicker. Some said the teens were nerdy; others said they were only showing off.
"Their point was, it just didn't fit," he says. "Why not deliver 100 copies to the high school and get it into their hands -- get kids used to observing other kids reading."
"teens don't really have an emotional attachment to newspapers."
????? Good for them. "Emotional attachment"???
I wonder how much of an emotional attachment they expect people to make with an inanimate object pitched onto the doorstep daily, casually breezed through and then tossed in the trash?
I have no emotional attachment to the junk mail that shows up in my mailbox daily either. I wonder if I can get a grant to study that?
fishin' wrote:I wonder if I can get a grant to study that?
The properly written grant application can get funds for any specious study one can imagine. I worked in a state unversity civil service system for many years--grant application writing was a cottage industry, and it was not uncommon to hear profs say: "Get Bob X, he can write grant apps like nobody's business."
Newspapers Can Attract Young Readers With Lifestyle Stories
Apr 21, 2004
Newspapers Can Attract Young Readers With More Lifestyle Stories, Features, Survey Says
By Siobhan McDonough - Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) - Newspapers can gain a wider audience among the young and minorities by paying more attention to their interest in lifestyle coverage, features and ads, editors and publishers were told Wednesday.
A study by the Readership Institute at Northwestern University said newspapers can't rely on the conventional wisdom that young adults will read more as they age, so it's important to deliver content that appeals to them.
The study, sponsored by the Newspaper Association of America, the American Society of Newspaper Editors and the McCormick Tribune Foundation, found that readers 35 and older look for hard news, editorials, lifestyle stories, "my community" features and service articles.
People 18 to 24 are attracted to lifestyle stories and features on such subjects as home, health, food, fashion, recreation and science. They're also interested in advertisements.
"They tend to be selective in what they read, looking at less than half of the Sunday paper and less than one-third of the weekday paper," the institute said.
John Lavine, director of the Readership Institute, described the research to a joint session of the annual conventions of the ASNE and NAA.
The study explored ways newspapers can improve readership among 18- to 24-year-olds and among minority groups, where readership is declining slightly.
Only one-third of young readers are heavy newspaper users, according to the study. They spend an average of 21 minutes each weekday reading the daily paper, and an average of 51 minutes on Sundays.
Readers 25 and older average 36 minutes per weekday, 68 minutes on Sunday, the study said.
Creating an improved readership experience requires "getting into the heads" of young, black, Asian and Hispanic readers to determine the most successful way to make, market and deliver a newspaper they feel has relevance for them, the institute said.
The study found that newspapers provide a positive experience if they give readers something to talk about, have useful ads, include civic and personal interests and are seen as a good financial value.
It's a negative experience if readers perceive the paper discriminates and stereotypes, covers too much or has too many long articles, the study said.
Speaking at the meeting, Lavine said young adults and minorities are particularly drawn to stories so compelling or close to home they want to tell others what they read - a test that applies to readers of any variety.
He gave some success stories, among them Gannett's alternative weekly Thrive in Boise, Idaho, which was planned for 32 pages but reached 64 thanks to strong ad sales; and the San Jose (California) Viet Mercury, which is reaching 44 percent of Vietnamese adults in its area, four times the nearest competitors.
Tribune Co. also publishes a youth-oriented tabloid in its home city of Chicago called RedEye, an offshoot of its flagship newspaper the Chicago Tribune. RedEye has 280,000 daily readers.
Renee Hampton, publisher of The Saginaw (Michigan) News, said the newspaper industry ought to pay attention to the institute's recommendations on how to attract young readers.
"We have to have a conversation with young people," she said. "Instead of us talking, we have to listen."
Jim Moroney, publisher of The Dallas Morning News, also noted the importance of not letting young people fall between the cracks. He said many of them are not devoid of news, but they're just getting it from other sources - online, on television.
"It's critically important because there's a larger and larger group of people each decade who are not reading the paper," he said.
The New Readers Survey heard from 10,800 readers of 52 daily papers. Surveys also were given to 6,600 newspaper employees. Some 33,000 stories, 12,000 ads and 21,000 in-paper promotions were analyzed.
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