Can Gen Z save the news media industry - without buying any newspapers?

Born after 1996, Gen Z does not consciously remember life before the internet, having grown up with the rise of smartphones, and instant accessibility of information. And while social media and entertainment content plays a big part of their life, don’t be too quick to believe the negative stereotype that Gen Z is not interested in news. Common Sense Media found in a recent survey that most teens age 13–17 think it’s important to follow current events. Similar results were found by VG’s Snapchat Discover initiative, demonstrating that young generations want to go deep on important topics and understand them, especially when it comes to social issues. So as traditional news consumers are feared to be only getting older and older, reaching this new digital audience is becoming crucial and news companies may need to start to rethink their business models to cater to them.

Meet the new digital consumer

This generation is often referred to as the first digital natives, being the first generation to be born into a time when that technology existed. They are unlike other generations, who either grew up without or came into adulthood during the rise of social media, smartphones, and instant accessibility of information. And as you can imagine, Gen Z’s digital consumption habits have only been accelerating since the arrival of Covid-19. The virus is transforming their educational journey and career start into online experiences.

Today, most gen z-ers are still teenagers. But as they age, their purchasing power grows with them; representing an opportunity for traditional news media companies to cultivate a new base of readers. But, to reach this demographic, news outlets have to start understanding how Gen Z consumes content and what they’re expecting from it.

Here’s what we know so far:

1. Subscription models are the norm

While previous generations have memories of car rides to Blockbuster, Gen Z has always been able to simply choose another film on Netflix. And while others recall the joy of buying their first CD in a record store, Gen Z remembers shuffling playlists on Spotify. This familiarity with subscription models is well documented in their consumption habits: the average American Gen Z-er pays around 14 different subscriptions.

The subscription model has been demonstrated to be an opportunity for news companies in the area of covid 19. Traditional media news outlets, with decades of having rentability problems, saw a resurgence from subscription models during the pandemic: The New York Times passed 6 million subscriptions since the pandemic and is now generating more revenue from subscription news than from print newspapers for the first time. The Guardian has now launched a Puzzles app as a subscription retention strategy to attract two million paid supporters by 2022.

2. Gen Z loves curated and personalized content, and they will pay for it

Raised with social media, Gen Z expects technology to know what their likes, wants and interests are. Experiences like Spotify (active personalization) and Netflix (passive personalization) are what they’re used to. Social media like Youtube allow them to curate their own media feeds through the “following” button, while also giving them recommendations on what they should watch next. Research from Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, How Young People Consume News and The Implications for Mainstream Media, found that young adults view the news from the perspective of what it can do for them as individuals, rather than for society as a whole. With the amount of ‘background’ or ‘indirect’ exposure to news created by social media, personalization means that Gen Z can minimize some of the daily decisions they have to make so they can focus on the more important topics.

Nearly all of Gen Z consumers (90%) pay for their content. Music and video streaming are the top paid services followed by console games, PC games, and mobile games. Gen Z reports that they are willing to pay for content if it offers better quality (61%), better experience (56%), and is more convenient (50%). Only four in 10 noted the need for an ad-free environment.

3. They expect a better product experience

With now nearly all tech companies focusing on UX and UI to attract new customers, it’s not surprising that Gen Z is used to better experiences. The same report from Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism found that media organizations will need to make the experience feel as accessible as Facebook or Netflix, create formats that are native to mobile and social platforms, and change the way they deliver the news. Gen Z has also been found to be driven by enjoyment in their lives, and this translates into what they look for in the news.

If news orgs want to get and keep new Gen Z users, they HAVE to get better tech. News apps and sites still aren’t intuitive enough. Gen Z is used to Netflix. When was the last time that logged you out? Compare that to a news site. https://t.co/rHM47bdruq

— Elana Zak (@elanazak)

4. They’re creating their own news outlets

In the aftermath of the 2016 presidential election, then 12-year-old Olivia felt like her classmates were largely uninformed around the topic. She felt a big disconnect between traditional media and the young people from her generation, so she created theCramm, a newsletter that complies daily news in an engaging and easily digestible format. She has now over 2.5k monthly page views. This is perhaps the biggest evidence that Gen Z doesn’t click with the current mainstream news.

Media news companies can build resistance with a subscription model targeted to Gen Z

Newspapers are hurting globally, largely due to struggling to accommodate the needs of the younger generation. As there are increasingly fewer people from the older age, newspapers remain obliged to adapt their services by putting younger generations as their core demographic. Gen Z is different from older generations not only in their interests and expectations of news experiences but also in their core attitude in terms of what they want from them.

It’s clear that there is a gap ready to be filled between news outlets and Generation Z. If publishers want to develop lifelong reading habits in this younger audience, they need to start catering to them now. Gen Z is already looking for a frictionless and personalized experience through subscriptions that are not being met by traditional news outlets. They like the idea of platforms curating high-quality content for them and are willing to pay for quality work that isn’t available elsewhere. And if traditional media outlets are not willing to create it for them, they will create an alternative themselves.

About this article

This article has been written by a student on the Grenoble Ecole de Management’s Advanced Masters in Digital Strategy Management. As part of a content creation assignment, students are given the task of writing articles based on their digital interests and disseminate the articles online. Articles are marked but we make minimal changes to the content. Thanks for reading! James Barisic, Programme Director, MS DSM.