News publishers need to meet Gen Z where they are, according to a study by the News Media Alliance

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enthusiastically and approved the program. “We launched the monthly Kid Scoop publication in the northeast and north-central } Dennis portion of the DeRossett, state first,” said executive DeRossett. “We director of the Nebraska Press Association partnered with White Wolf Web printers, which prints most of the local newspapers in the region. It prints Kid Scoop and then delivers it with the local

} Amy Johnson,

publisher of the Springview Herald

newspapers, and the newspaper brings Kid Scoop to the schools.” Keya Paha County Schools in Springview, Nebraska is one of the local schools receiving Kid Scoop for its dual classrooms of third and fourth graders and fifth and sixth graders.

“We take the monthly Kid Scoop package to the school, and with the very first edition, students and teachers were excited,” said Amy Johnson, publisher of the Springview Herald. “Students enjoy Kid Scoop during their downtime at school, and they also take it home as a non-digital activity with parents.”

According to DeRossett, the association plans to double the distribution of Kid Scoop by the beginning of the 2022-2023 school year to schools in south, southeast and south-central Nebraska, representing 9,000 students.

The Kid Scoop program also includes a website with additional content for download, including a teacher guide.—BS

Getting to know Gen Z

News publishers need to meet Gen Z where they are, according to a study by the News Media Alliance

The point of naming and quantifying generations — Boomers, Gen X, Millennials and now Gen Z — is to better understand them, to wrap context around their collective experiences in the world. For news publishers, understanding generational nuances is essential to effective marketing and growing audience. An evergreen challenge they face is how best to appeal to younger readers, listeners and viewers. The ideal, of course, is to endear young audiences, to keep them engaged and informed, proving the news publisher’s value proposition, day in and day out. The goal is to earn trust so that the relationship between news source and subscriber is galvanized and lifelong.

The Pew Research Center defines Generation Z as people who were born in 1997 and after, citing 1996 as “a meaningful cutoff between Millennials and Gen Z for a number of reasons, including key political, economic and social factors that define the Millennial generation’s formative years.” This is a generation that is “always on,” according to Pew, referring to Gen Z’s relationship with technology and social media.

Gen Z is also a generation maturing during adversity. Though they seemed destined to inherit a strong economy and opportunity, the COVID-19 pandemic toppled those notions, Pew Research Center’s Kim Park and Ruth Igielnick reported in their 2020 reporting, “On the Cusp of Adulthood and Facing an Uncertain Future: What We Know about Gen Z So Far.” A March 2020 Pew Research Center survey had shockingly reported that half — 50% — of Gen Zers (ages 18 to 23) said they or someone in their household had either lost a job or taken a pay cut as a result of the pandemic.

But this generation — notably more diverse than the previous ones — still aspires. Pew Research reports, “They

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are less likely to drop out of high school and more likely to be enrolled in college. Among 18- to 21-year-olds no longer in high school in 2018, 57% were enrolled in a two-year or fouryear college. This compares with 52% among Millennials in 2003 and 43% among members of Gen X in 1987.”

Gen Z also has a different perspective on the world’s problems and the role of government in solving them. “Fully seven-in-ten Gen Zers say the government should do more to solve problems, while 29% say government is doing too many things better left to businesses and individuals,” Park and Igielnick reported.

Gen Z is connected, digitally savvy and concerned about social and policy issues, but what does this generation desire or demand from a news provider? What steers them to a news source? What inspires them to pay for news content? What does it take to earn their trust?

News for the Next Gen

Much of what we learned about Gen Z from Pew Research’s findings proved out in a recent study by the News Media Alliance (NMA): “The Key to Gen Z: Insights and Ideas to Build Lasting Relationships.” NMA commissioned Springboard Market Research to study 424 U.S. adults, ages 18-29, to better understand the relationships “twenty-somethings” have to news.

“About half of Gen Z consumers (51 percent) report reading news daily,” NMA staff reported in a summary of the results. “The majority (60 percent) say they would likely to use local news products, while one-third (33 percent) say they would be likely to pay for local news. Not surprisingly, twentysomethings prefer to get news online via social media apps and web searches rather than in print. They want to ‘snack’ on news that has been customized to their preferences throughout the day. Motivators to subscribe to local news outlets include free trials and special content targeted to them.”

Newsletters are one way news publishers can create a curated, personalized news experience for Gen Z subscribers. In recent years, publishers like The Economist, The New Yorker and The Washington Post launched newsletters related to climate change and the environment.

Social media plays an exceedingly important role in how Gen Z seeks out or is exposed to news. The NMA study revealed some patterns in which platforms they turn to and at what points throughout the day. For example, 42% of Gen Z respondents reported that they use Facebook in the morning and shift to other social platforms later in the day.

This generation also has a preference for “striking visuals, video and an easy-to-navigate app and site,” they reported.

The study also revealed how important it is for Gen Z news consumers to see themselves represented in news coverage and coverage of the issues that matter to them most: social justice, civil rights, racial discrimination, the environment/climate change, finance, and health and wellness.

Informing the Gen Z audience depends on meeting them where they are, NMA surmised. Podcasts are a good example. News publishers have capitalized on audio as a new means to tell stories to audiences on-the-go. Some have created podcasts around the topics of importance to Gen Z listeners — climate, social justice and practical, factbased reporting, like CNN’s Coronavirus Fact vs. Fiction podcast.

“For local news, they are interested in weather, events/arts and entertainment, and other news about their town,” NMA’s staff explained.

This knowledge — about how Gen Z wants to discover news and the topics most important to them — allows news publishers to invest smartly in reaching them.

“The findings from the study are exciting in terms of the opportunities they present for news outlets,” Rebecca Frank, NMA’s vice president, research and insights, explained in the summary. “Gen Z places an emphasis on credible, accurate and fact-checked news, which is exactly what our members provide. News outlets that apply the insights in this report will have a distinct advantage over other content providers because the quality of their content already meets Gen Z’s expectations.”

The complete study is available to NMA’s more than 2,000 news organization members.—GAP

} Generation Z is more concerned

about social causes than preceeding generations.