International Journalism
Youth Consumption of Journalism and International News
In May of 2006, National Geographic reported research findings that youth aged 18-24 are geographically illiterate. According to the survey, “Despite nearly constant news coverage since the war [in Iraq] began in 2003, 63 percent of [them] failed to correctly locate the country on a map of the Middle East. Seventy percent could not find Iran or Israel… Even for U.S. geography, the survey results are just as dismal. Half could not find New York State on a map of the United States”. Basic geography skills also suffer: “only two-thirds could indicate which way northwest is on a map”. National Geographic rightfully asks if we, the U.S. youth even care that we were in the bottom two during the 2002 geographical study that included youth from Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Sweden, and Great Britain. Pressure is being put on educational institutions, the media, and the Millenial generation to realize that international “knowledge is essential for survival in our rapidly globalizing world” 1.
In an age of information overload and international news “under-load” the message appears to be lost on today’s American youth. Now, more than ever, American journalism must evaluate the nature of news media consumption for the sake of our futures, and make critical decisions about what is more important, news sales or global citizenship, and how we can maximize the technological evolution of journalism.
The talk of American journalism lately has been the state of the U.S. economy, but while the financial economy suffers, another economy, our information economy, suffers relatively quietly. The internet is a mess of information, and it is the messy room that youth live in, a cyber space that many older generations fail to understand. While many baby boomers still take the morning paper with their coffee, we are checking our e-mail, updating our Facebook or Myspace accounts, scoping our favorite blog, and viewing a You Tube video we found on a link somewhere. The Pew Research Center for People and the Press categorized news consumers into four categories: Integrators, Net-Newsers, Traditionalists, and the Disengaged. The largest group of news consumers is the traditionalist group, median age fifty-two, and a huge proponent of traditional television news channels and newspapers. Integrators, which comprise 23% of the surveyed population, are thought to be more engaged and sophisticated for their use of net and traditional sources (print, television, radio). A striking 44% of college grads say they get their news online daily, but the proportion of their peers getting no news has increased substantially over the past decade.
Net-Newsers (13%) is a likely category for these relatively affluent and educated young Americans; they are characterized by their appreciation for interactive web features, and new technologies. Of them, 30% prefer news clips on the net, compared to 18% who still watch traditional television broadcasts, and 26% read blogs regularly. The younger, more educated crowd often supports cable news, and ‘infotainment’ programs with large partisan divisions like The Colbert Report, and The Daily Show with John Stewart. Many of them have smart phones, whose owners (37%) check news daily using web-access through their iPhones or Blackberries. The internet has served to provide ‘world-wide’ connectivity and a broader range of places to find news and related multimedia. Since we suffer from information overload, many newsfeed sites like Digg, offer a niche-ier news community that caters specifically to youth interests (technology, pop culture, entertainment, sports etc.). The World Wide Web, in effect, has bred an international phenomenon of self-interest: we pick and choose what sorts of news is important to us, at the expense of global awareness. It is no surprise, then, that youth, led by the limitless links on the internet, tend to “graze” online information, focus on what is interesting to them personally, and customize (or limit) their knowledge accordingly2.
The Project for Excellence in Journalism (Journalism.Org) is also concerned with the “oversupply” problem afflicting American Journalism. The resulting tendency to create news niches with “news you can use” means that we ignore issues that were really important to the craft of journalism in previous generations: monitoring the government, for example, or keeping up with foreign affairs. The movement has become so much more about news the people want versus the broader scope of news that they need. This leads to more biases and stereotypes, “compassion fatigue”, and increasingly diluted hard news. And the internet is not necessarily to blame. The rise of credible bloggers, online think tanks, and citizen journalism shows promise for the future. The State of the News Media annual report (2007) asserts that “The key question is whether the investment community sees the news business as a declining industry or an emerging one in transition.” Are we going to continue in the direction of “franchising” and “branding” our news, or re-direct our focus on brain-food for our citizens? Put this way, news should not be seen primarily as an industry, but as a necessity that must transition upward.
We must make a return to global awareness. In a September 1996 New York Times article entitled “Foreign Coverage Less Prominent in News Magazines”, writer Robin Pogrebin discusses “the proliferation of domestic news” trend that we still see today. On the back end of this is the observation of editors of news magazines and foreign policy experts, who say “there is something deeper at work, that since Vietnam and even more so since the cold war, there has been a gradual but significant lessening of interest in matters overseas”. In 1995, Time devoted 14 percent of the magazine to international news, according to Hall's Magazine Editorial Reports, which analyzes the editorial content of most consumer magazines. Just a decade before, in 1985, Time had 24 percent. “But editors,” as reported by Pogrebin, “say they are simply responding to their readers, who care most about international news that directly affects them, a criterion that is increasingly difficult to meet”. Some journalists warned against the danger national self-interest posed to the integrity of journalism, saying that it could lead to an “unhealthy, ill-informed isolationism”. It appears that life-style and consumer interest stories will consume our status as a world power if we continue to let ourselves focus on ''low-cholesterol diets, science, the dinosaurs, life on Mars…''3.
The youth, and the future, are inheriting this ego-centric attitude toward the news. In December of 2003, the New York Times reported that the Dallas Morning News had hired a man with an advertising background to investigate “how to persuade more young readers, particularly those from their late teens to their mid-30's, to pick up a newspaper”. Several hundred young people in the Dallas area were asked to describe their dream newspaper: “a publication with big, bright photographs and snappy articles that focused heavily on subjects like entertainment, all wrapped in a package so thin that it could be scanned in the time it took to ride an elevator”4. While this sample of youth was taken from one small area of the nation, it serves to illuminate national trends: youth looking to news that satisfies their wants in a way that is fun and immediately gratifying. Now, imagine whether or not such a “dream” publication would venture to report global issues like HIV/AIDS, poverty, death tolls in Iraq…or anything else that shatters these dreams with an uglier reality.
Studies conducted by the Readership Institute at the Media Management Center (2003) suggest that young readers spend less time reading newspapers than their parents did at their age and certainly less time than their parents do now. The study shows that nearly 40 percent of Americans aged 18 to 24 do not read a paper at all, compared to fewer than 30 percent of 45- to 64-year-olds. What is even more unsettling is that one of the institute leaders focused on the implications of these results for the newspapers, and not so much the impact this would have on society’s well-being. It is not the volume of news publications sold that we should dwell on, but the loss of valuable information on future generations. Let us hope that youth get informed soon, through print or other ways.
Perhaps we need another rescue plan (this is not in reference to the Wall Street bail-outs), one for a lesser known beneficiary – public television, radio and other independent media. In 2005, the Ford Foundation, recognizing the declining state of American Journalism, supported National Public Radio, Public Broadcasting Service, Link TV (connecting the U.S. to the world), and the Sundance Documentary Fund (focused on human rights issues), among other organizations and efforts.
The primary goal was to bolster international affairs, and fair and accurate reporting5.
Other independent organizations are doing their best to mobilize international youth to get informed about the state of the world beyond their own borders and to keep up with news in general. Youthink.Worldbank.Org, a project spear-headed by the World Bank and aimed at cultivating cross-cultural dialogue and continued inquiry, is just one example. Our daily interactions with the internet and other technologies can make finding the truth seem like a daunting task. Due to the diversity of news sources and overwhelming media biases, we do not know which paper to read, which show to watch, which link to click. We are intimidated by a slew of information – piled high, burying the global issues that demand awareness. But in due time, I am confident that we will be able to better organize and tackle our increasingly diverse sources of news. I anticipate that one day we will learn to maximize social networks, online communities, and multimedia in the effort to become more educated, in solidarity with our international peers.
Journalism.Org’s Major Trends in 2007 section observes that “while journalists are becoming more serious about the Web, no clear models of how to do journalism online really exist yet”. I believe that the answer lies strongly with our youth, and the next generation of journalists, who are growing up on the web. In our hunger for cyber interaction, we need to revisit what forms of interaction are more worthwhile for our news diets. The Youth DNA study on one-hundred young people in ten different countries and how they approach the news (as reported by the World Association of News), offers suggestions: utilizing multiple sources, exercising more active journalistic practices, looking beyond self-interest, digging deeper, and discussing news with others.
1 Roach, John. Young Americans Geographically Illiterate, Survey Suggests. National Geographic News. 2 May, 2006.
2 Key News Audiences Now Blend Online and Traditional Sources. The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. 17 August, 2008.
3 Pogrebin, Robin. Foreign Coverage Less Prominent in News Magazines. 23 September, 1996. New York Times.
4 Steinberg, Jacques. Technology and Media: To Grab Young Readers, Newspapers Print Free Jazzy Editions. 1 December 2003. New York Times.
5 Manly, Lorne, and Jensen, Elizabeth. Public TV and Radio to Receive Big Grants. 10 May 2005. New York Times.
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