How to Reach a Non-Typical Audience

As a 27-year old, I believe I am the demographic that the two dozen editors here at this conference (mostly of the above 45 crowd) are trying to reach. Although, I myself feel very separated from even the undergraduates at USC. Nowadays, even a 5-year age difference can create a gap of technology knowledge the size of Lake Michigan. So how can the editors and publishers of the world keep up? Well, the first step is by attending conferences such as this one. The second step is to hire young talent, take a chance on someone with a little less resume padding and a little more innovation and ideas.

Chaka M’kali is an example of someone who will be shaping the media in the future. His focus is on community outreach programs and empowering youth. This may seem separate from a daily paper, but this isn’t true for much longer. The fact is, the youth he is empowering are the journalists and bosses of the future and the content users of today. Editors would be wise to listen to what they have to say.

Ocean MacAdams, said he considers MTV News a “gateway drug” for viewers. They go to his news site to get the rundown of news, and then they move on to other sites to get more information for the news stories they care about. MTV News started out primarily covering music but has now evolved as the channel grew. Now it is really about pop culture, politics, race, gender, sexuality and more. “We don’t have to cover hard news,” MacAdams said. “We do it because our audience cares about it.” I have to believe this is surprising to the editors here at the conference, although I hope not. It is frustrating to constantly hear that the youth of today are disinterested in culture, politics and the world around them. This kind of thinking needs to stop, and once it does I wouldn’t be surprised if the newspapers of this country were the stronger for it.

Rahaf Harfoush (http://www.rahafharfoush.com/blog/) considers iGoogle and Google Reader as ways to organize the millions of stories, information, video and blogs people are bombarded with every day. I consider it an example of the many different ways users are now self-editing their content and making it appeal to their own personal self-interests. As an individual, this seems liberating, but I can see how the idea of readers picking and choosing from hundreds of papers can make newspaper companies tremble in their boots. Harfoush recommends digg.com (http://digg.com) to help aggregate news into a more digestible format.

Harfoush was asked by one of the editors if she felt like she was a good representation of youth today. She didn’t think Harfoush was normal, she thought she was a geek. This is ludicrous. Harfoush pointed out that the majority of youth are going online, and sites like Google and digg.com are how they view and search out news. MacAdams added that 60 percent of the people that come to MTV News, get there through other news and online sites. Personally, I think assuming 20-year-olds do nothing but watch local television and play X-box is exactly the type of mentality that are destroying newspapers today.

MacAdams also pointed out that while large newspapers are struggling, college papers and local papers are thriving. This is very true, and really shows the shift from a large, omnipotent voice of a paper to a eclectic, evolving conversation present in online media sites and blogs.

What about the digital divide? As the world gets smaller through new technology, what happens to those who cannot afford to have a computer and online access? The gap seems wide, perilous and all-consuming. Michael Williams asked the editors to ask what their companies could do to help this problem (i.e. product giveaways, technology grants). What remains to be seen, however, is how low-income populations will play catch up in a world advancing at light speed. It is hard for me, and I was fortunate to grow up without economic strains.

Harfoush mentioned the generational gap present in the workforce today. When you have 20-year olds on Blackberries during meetings and looking at Facebook during the day, does this mean they are less productive during the day? I think you have to look at how much more work output people of my generation are expected to produce, and for the most part we always live up to that task. I see in my parents the work ethic that putting in a 60-hour work week means you are successful and a good worker. For people of my generation, the number of hours you work a week is not nearly as important as what you produce during that time. Why sit in a cubicle and stare at the wall, waiting for someone to call you back when you can find 1,000 different ways to get a hold of someone else or see what other news organizations are doing. 

But what about when comments on a website are constantly aggressive? How does this come across to other readers who come to the site?  MacAdams said there are some restrictions that need to be upheld, there needs to be a clear code of conduct as to where the line is and why it shouldn’t be crossed. I worked for a website this summer, and we had a very large reader forum that we were very proud of. However, when someone said something we considered to be slanderous, we removed it. It didn’t happen often, and we always emailed the person and explained to them why their comment was being removed. I think this extra step is important, because some people don’t realize how harsh what they are writing is, and others need to be reminded that a news website is STILL A NEWS WEBSITE, and needs to be professional.