Your Mom is Dead
Posted by anastasia on 09-22-2006This makes me very sad. From Editor & Publisher:
"What does it say about the newspaper industry's chances of reaching the 'South Park' generation when, without ceremony, the Quad-City Times snuffs out the final online remnant of 'Your Mom,' probably the most audacious kid imitative ever launched?
Your Mom is dead.
Or, as the Quad-City Times in Davenport, Iowa, crudely and kind of cruelly puts it on the former site of the unique print/Web community product: 'Your Mom is no longer online!'
Your Mom is dead, and we should all mourn that fact, because apart from whatever market-specific facts led to its demise in Iowa, this quirky product dreamed up by a bunch of journalism grad students represented the best effort ever to attract U.S. teenagers to newspapers."
This seems especially poignant given this recent bit of research from the Knight Foundation (via USA Today) stating:
"45% of teens say TV is the best overall source of news, 44% think it's the most accurate and 43% think it's the easiest to use. Only 28% of teachers thought TV was the best news source, a distant second to newspapers' 48%.
Findings show 90% of students were at least somewhat interested in current events; 51% get news online once a week or more.
Of those who get news online, ease of use may be a factor. While 66% get news from sites such as Google, Microsoft, AOL or Yahoo at least weekly, only 21% get it weekly from national newspaper sites."
Read past coverage of Your Mom on Ypulse:
September 22nd, 2006 at 2:38 pm
I would love to know more about this, Anastasia — why did it get shut down? What WERE the market-specific facts? Really, really curious, b/c as you say, it was an incredibly fun, innovative project.
I call for a Ypulse Investigative Report!
:-)