Back from a whirlwind weekend in Hollywood at the Online News Association conference (the link will take you to coverage of the event)...I am going to just reflect on what I think would be relevant to Ypulse readers.

First -- newspapers still don't really understand how to reach young readers. We had a group exercise where we had to come up with a plan (in 30 minutes) for a fictional newspaper to attract young readers to its Website. It was kind of comical -- everyone just listed every new technology we could think of along with the accompanying buzzwords: Blogs, SMS, podcasting, social networking, Craigslist, ratings...Newsletter readers: come to Ypulse.com to read the rest...

I'm not saying I have the answer for newspapers because I don't. I don't think younger people are going to buy printed newspapers -- they may pick up an alt weekly when they're out to find out what's going on, but they are not going to be daily readers like their parents may have been. This means that local newspaper brands don't mean much to this crowd leaving room (opportunity) for them to create new branded products targeting young people online (with TV tie-ins since this is where they get their news) and through their mobile devices.

I also think an interesting balance will evolve out of the push to incorporate "user generated content" -- yes the Web is democratizing media, but people still look to the media for context and editorial voice. Whoever can strike the best (and most engaging, entertaining balance) will win over not just young people, but any audience. Let me add transparent to engaging and entertaining. I was talking to a cool woman who works at Yahoo! News about why Jon Stewart has been so successful with a younger audience and we decided it was b/c of his transparency. He's witty but transparent at the same time, and this generation is hungry for honesty. Less snark, more smart, witty, honest and real...

I think in a way this exercise embodied what I saw as the theme of the conference: there are lots of new technologies out there, we're not sure how to integrate them into what we do now, we want to incorporate more "user-generated" content (blogs) but we (big media) also want to maintain a certain standard of quality and journalistic integrity....and we're also a little worried/threatened that blogs/craigslist will take away our eyeballs and revenue as well as undermine our authority...

Posted by anastasia