Making Better Citizens
Roxana Morduchowicz, Media Education Director, Argentina Ministry of Education
A "journalist for a day" programme in the Argentine capital of Buenos Aires is a good idea in itself; participants research and write stories on themes that interest young people, with the best stories published in the city’s nine newspapers.
Ms Morduchowicz found a way to make it even more useful.
She undertook a study of participants, comparing their habits and attitudes with students who did not participate, and found that those who took part had become better citizens.
The study, conducted for WAN in its Newspapers in Education Development Project, a new initiative with the international newsprint producer Norske Skog, found that the 13- to 14-year olds who participated: had a greater interest in social issues than those who didn’t participate; had a better appreciation of media as a source of information; read more newspapers; had a higher level of knowledge of current affairs; were better debaters were more tolerant and open-minded; were more aware of pluralism and freedom of expression; and showed a greater level of support for democracy.
Gaming the News
Jan Schaffer, Executive Director, J-Lab, The Pew Center for Civic Journalism, USA
"Information becomes meaningful when it is accompanied by attachment or involvement." Ms Schaffer thinks that point is important enough to repeat twice.
"You could think of it this way: Future news might well be less about story telling - the stories we journalists want to write, produce or tell - and more about story making - the stories that our consumers are assembling for themselves via their own process of gathering information, sifting through the onslaught of daily info-bits and participating in learning about things."
This new model has implications for reaching younger readers, who have a natural affinity for the interactivity of the internet that is central to this new way of gathering information, says Ms Schaffer.
Ms Schaffer’s presentation examined several examples interactive journalism including blogs, tax calculators, interactive maps, budget balancing games, digital storytelling, and more.
Investing in Youth Readership
Andrea Ceccherini, President of the Osservatorio Permanente Giovani - Editori, Italy
Osservatorio Permanente Giovani - Editori was born three years ago as an open call to all publishing groups in Italy, during an alarming period for youth readership of newspapers.
Few newspapers were being distributed in the schools. "What was even more disturbing is that all the data currently available indicates that if we had few readers today, it was destined to decline tomorrow, said Mr Ceccherini.
"This is why, to counter this sad decline, we decided to turn to the young, convinced as we were that a young person who does not read is poorer for it, displays a poverty of ideas, of experiences, and of culture, and it is true that a publisher who deals with young people who will not read must improvise."
The Osservatorio created a Newspaper in the Classroom project, which distributes many different newspapers to Italian classrooms once a week, but with three conditions: that the newspapers be used during normal school hours; that teachers participate in a distance-learning class to learn how to teach with them; and that students read and evaluate the newspapers so publishers can understand how they see the newspapers of today, and what they would like to see in them tomorrow.
"And if the data indicates that young readership of newspapers in Italy is increasing - increasing by more than 30 percent from when we first started our project - it means that our first step was a step in then right direction," says Mr Ceccherini.
Good Ideas for Boosting Circulation and Revenue
Tommaso Prennushi, Founder, TP Proyectos de Marketing, Spain
WAN challenged Mr Prennushi to find 20 successful young reader ideas that build circulation and increasing revenue. Here are a few of them:
Sud-Ouest, France, which ran a contest in which 6,000 students translated SMS messages into proper French (only 32 produced correct answers). The project produced a 15,000 copy increase in circulation.
Ekstra Bladet, Denmark, which created an online forum for young sports enthusiasts, and increased sales to them by 6.4 percent.
The Age, Australia, which created a twice-yearly Super Quiz linking the paper to the web and increased circulation 28,000 copies during the quiz periods (part of a long-term strategy to link the web to the paper).
Correio da Manha, Portugal, which resurrected the classic soccer game Subbuteo by offering a set for 30 tokens, publishing one-a-day. 35,000 games were delivered and the sales covered the promotion costs.
Hong Kong Financial Times, which saw a 46 percent growth in NIE sales by providing an English-language supplement for young readers with Chinese text to help comprehension. Forty percent of Hong Kong secondary schools receive it.
