Stop Scaring Teens With The News
Date : 21 Jan 2008 Category : Business
Techdirt
A recent study reports that while most teenagers describe their online experiences on YouTube as a "treat," most classify their online news experiences as stressful or a "reminder of the world's dangers." Furthermore, most of the teenagers in the study do not actively keep up with the news. Rarely, if ever, do they go directly to the news websites, but rather end up there from portals and news aggregators, and only then if something catches their eye. The report recommends that news organizations help allay teen angst by making their sites better springboards for conversations and being more focused on solutions and problem-solvers. That said, is this really a problem with online news? Perhaps the way traditional news organizations approach the news is actually the problem. How many teenagers regularly watch the evening news? Perhaps news organizations should study why The Daily Show and Digg are so popular, since both present news in a more relevant, palatable, and oftentimes, more humorous fashion. Maybe it's not the online-ness of the news that is the cause of their waning popularity, but rather, the fact that they are at risk of becoming irrelevant to a new generation of news consumers.
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