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Seeking a younger audience for your journalism

I attended a panel discussion Monday night with representatives from King 5, Seattle Times, MSNBC, Crosscut, the Stranger and DailyKos. Called “Today’s News: A Webolution in Progress,” it was sponsored by the Washington News Council and took place at the Seattle Public Library.

The most interesting exchange - to me, anyway - came when the topic of how to attract younger readers came up. 

The mainstream folks recognized the need to find new ways to reach younger readers and described the concerted efforts they’re making in this regard. (The News Tribune is no different, by the way. It’s something we talk about often.)

But Josh Feit from the Stranger and Joan McCarter from DailyKos seemed perplexed. “We don’t even think about that,” they both said. They just do what they do and the audience comes.

Of course, this is one of the major advantages niche publication like the Stranger, with its excellent Slog blog, and DailyKos, a runaway blogging success story with half a million daily visitors, have over mainstream general interest outfits like newspapers and TV stations. But us MSMers would be wise to pay attention to how readers are responding to their model, which relies heavily on identity and personality and opinion. It blurs the line between journalism and activism, of course, and we’re not open to that. But the conversational style of writing leads to vibrant discussion online. And that’s a good recipe for loyal readership.

I’m a firm believer that news - fair, accurate and factual news - can be delivered in a conversational style and the mainstream news organizations that figure that out first will be best equipped to evolve in this new era.

Posted by MarkBriggs on Thursday, September 20, 2007
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