Publishers grapple with younger audiences avoiding the news

By Sara Guaglione

Publishers have historically struggled to compete for audiences’ attention when they were shifting to consuming content on social media platforms like Facebook and YouTube. Now, young people are actively avoiding the news, which was a cause of consternation among a panel of executives and editors from The New York Times, Vox Media, Reuters and Google News Lab at a Reuters event held Wednesday morning in New York City.

Roughly four out of 10 people under 35 years old – 42% – “sometimes or often actively avoid the news,” according to the 11th annual “Digital News Report” report conducted by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. Albeit, that aversion is only slightly more acute than among those 35 years old and older, 36% of whom sometimes or often steer clear of the news.

The report compiled responses from over 93,000 online news consumers in 46 global markets from January-February 2022.

“I’m very pessimistic about our current state of media in the U.S. right now. These numbers are deeply depressing and should be a very strong wake-up call for all of us in journalism,” said Vox Media’s publisher Melissa Bell during the Reuters event.

The numbers regarding audiences’ news avoidance aren’t the report’s only downers. The percentage of people in the U.S. who say they have not used any source of news in the last week (including TV, print, online, social media and radio) has grown from 3% in 2013 to 15% in 2022, per the report. But the problem is even more pronounced for 18 to 24-year-olds. Since 2015, those who said they have gone to a news website or app in the last week dropped from 29% in 2015 to 20% in 2020, Reuters Institute’s director Rasmus Nielsen said during the event. The decline for those who are 25 to 34 years old was from 34% to 22%.

Why are those under 35 turning away from the news?

The report found a few main reasons. Readers younger than 35 found the news cycle to be too repetitive on topics like politics and COVID-19. The news brings down their mood. The news is hard to understand and follow. And they don’t trust the news: people under 35 are the lowest-trusting age group in Reuters’ report, with 37% of both 18–24s and 25–34s across all markets saying they trust most news most of the time, compared with 47% of those 55 and older.

If these readers are actively choosing to avoid news content, the issue of converting them into paying subscribers becomes even more challenging for news publishers. Just 17% of those under 35 in the U.S. are news subscribers to a digital news service, the Reuters report found.

These hurdles are likely why legacy news publishers are increasingly forming teams dedicated to reaching young people. The Los Angeles Times created a team this month devoted to creating content exclusively on Instagram. The Washington Post formed a task force last August to figure out how to attract more young and …read more

Source:: Digiday