Dear News Media, Please Stop Generalizing Millennials
The assumption that millennials are just privileged idiots who just expect everything to fall out of the sky is stupid and tired.
There was a headline on NiemanLab titled “Millennials say keeping up with the news is important to them — but good luck getting them to pay for it.” The source was a study called the Media Insight Project, a collaboration between the American Press Institute and the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Its subtitle says, “The new report from the Media Insight Project looks at millennials’ habits and attitudes toward news consumption: ‘I really wouldn’t pay for any type of news because as a citizen it’s my right to know the news.’”
I thought it was a little clickbait-y for one reason. The premise of that pull quote was from an interview with “23 millennials in 3 different locations in the country,” specifically from a 22-year old Chicagoan and a 19-year old San Fraciscoan. First of all, “millennial” is such a broad term. For the most part, that’s anyone born from 1980 to 2000. I get that news revenue and news consumption have changed overtime largely because of the Internet, but that doesn’t mean that young people won’t pay for news ever. The statistic in the study is that at least 40% of millennials pay for some sort of subscription, but it’s focus is on broad numbers and social media behaviors, not demographics and from which media sources.
I get that news revenue and news consumption have changed overtime largely because of the Internet, but that doesn’t mean that young people won’t pay for news ever.
The fact is, paying for news or any sort of subscription media is tough for anyone fresh out of college or below because they have expense constraints and because information, largely free on the Internet and for the most part funded by advertising, may not be something they’re looking to pay for — yet. The game changes when they become professionals and they need the best information from the best sources to give them an edge in the workplace and to keep up with a largely adapting world, and some of that information doesn’t come for free, and rightly so. Furthermore, their tastes can and will mature over time, and when they have disposable income coming from their paychecks, they will be more likely to pay for content that matters to them.
Daily reporting is definitely facing difficulties and becoming increasingly harder to monetize, especially for local entities, but again, that doesn’t mean that young people will never pay for media in general, which is the assumption — or the tone — in this article. It just means that news as we know it has to evolve in the value that it provides to their target markets, and as well as their business models and marketing methods to maintain relevancy and sustainability. But we already knew that.
I’m a bit disappointed because I read NiemanLab religiously, being a proponent of media and technology’s role in pushing its innovation, distribution, and business models. I feel like this takes another jab at the millennial generation, claiming us to be some sort of privileged idiots who just expect everything to fall out of the sky without us having to do or pay anything for it. That assumption is so stupid, and quite frankly, tired. Maybe that 22-year old and 19-year old feel that way, but it doesn’t mean everyone else does or always will.
It’s also possible that the issue here is not so one sided about the audience, but could very well be the media sources themselves. Maybe they need to provide content that the next generation will find enough value to pay for or find valuable, period; maybe they need payment methods that’s as simple as swiping on Tinder or navigating Instagram; maybe they need to build trust and clout to the point that they’re seen as indispensable to a certain audience. Maybe, just maybe, the media should be the one who should stop feeling privileged that people ought to pay for their content, and instead do something about it so that it’s worthwhile in people’s lives. They should start building relationships now, in order to reap the rewards, both socially and financially later.
It’s not about making millennials laughing stocks and implicitly claiming them to be the generation responsible for killing the watchdog of society. It’s about finding new ways to make them see its value for the society they want to live in.
My point: Stop fucking putting millennials in a box. Sure, we’re doomed and will be the ones to suffer the economic blunders of our predecessors, but our open-mindedness, dependence on and desire for information, and combined purchasing power is immense and will only increase over time. If anything, we’re quicker to pay for things we find real value in and align with the things that we believe in. We’re not a bunch of nincompoops as many of these articles suggest. It’s not about making millennials laughing stocks and implicitly claiming them to be the generation responsible for killing the watchdog of society. It’s about finding new ways to make them see its value for the society they want to live in, and providing that in the schedule, format, and medium that appeals to them and the many segments of their demographic.
As Clay Shirky said, “When we shift our attention from ‘save newspapers’ to ‘save society’, the imperative changes from ‘preserve the current institutions’ to ‘do whatever works.’ And what works today isn’t the same as what used to work…No one experiment is going to replace what we are now losing with the demise of news on paper, but over time, the collection of new experiments that do work might give us the journalism we need.”
My message: give us the journalism we want and need. Experiment endlessly. Stop marginalizing us, because that does no one any good. Instead, figure out how you can make it better. And we will gladly ask you to take our money.
Originally published at thebadprince.com. You can follow me @TheBadPrince.
