The first session of the afternoon continued with lessons from the winners of the World Young Reader Awards

How to (Again) Reach Young Readers in Print

Young people under 24 were simply not reading print, so Neue Osnabrucker set out to capture them again.

They did it with a “web to print” strategy, teaming up with a social network to produce a youth supplement that generates both readership and advertising.

“Based on the great success of our affiliated community network basecom, the idea was to add our skills, go offline and create a youth magazine which is regional, cross-medial and user-generated at the same time,“ says Mr Wehberg.

“Blue” is a monthly magazine aimed at 14- to 20-year olds, who are deeply involved in conceiving and producing the editorial content. All magazine themes are suggested by readers, and the magazine has a strong link between online and print, using much user-generated content. The magazine is “pitched” as the magazine of the on-line community, and teaser ads for the magazine are placed on the network.

Each month, 15,000 to 20,000 copies of 32-page tabloid are distributed for free. There is a tight link between print and on-line - much of the themes and content are generated through the social network - and the magazine features many elements that appeal to the young: heavy with photos, small bits of text, lots of entry points to stories, lots of weblinks to online content.

How to help children lead the way in saving energy

If you want to attract young readers to your newspaper, provide them a means to get involved with topics of interest to them.

The Indian daily Malayala Manorama in Kerala State did this creating “Serve as a Volunteer for Energy (SAVE)”, a community conservation community contest hat encouraged children to reduce energy use in the home, helping household budgets and the environment.

The newspaper partnered with the Energy Management Centre of the government’s Department of Power to conduct the programme. “The newspaper offered to give wide publicity to the need for energy saving and the ways of doing it,” says Mr Venugopal. “We also offered to use its social influence and pulling power to attract the maximum number of students to the scheme.”

In return, the government sponsored prizes - laptop computers, energy saving refrigerators and lamps -- and gave technical support. Students aged 10 to 17 participated: they were invited to implement tips for saving energy that were published regularly in the educational supplement in the daily, then - as evidence of their success -- submit two consecutive power bills, daily meter readings and a write-up discussing their methods. The winning write-ups were published in the newspaper.

The project generated widespread attention - and revenue as well. “State electricity authorities, who were highly impressed by the SAVE campaign, came forward with an advertisement campaign in the newspaper highlighting methods for energy saving, with endorsements by celebrities”, says Mr Venugopal. “This brought in revenue of Rupees 5.5 million (about US$100,000) to the newspaper.”

Making Teachers Local Heroes

To reach student readers, the Limburger Dagblad focused on their teachers.

The southern Holland regional newspaper launched a “Coolest Teacher” contest that energized the community and honoured the best teachers in a very modern way, using print and online interactivity.

Here’s how it worked:

 Students nominated teachers by filling in a form on the website of Dagblad De Limburger/Limburgs Dagblad.

 The criteria included teaching methods, ability to hold student attention, ability to put students at ease, ability to speak the language of teen-agers and dress in a really cool way.

 More than 400 teachers were nominated. A jury on the youth desk of the newspaper chose the ten finalists, who were introduced in print and online and given their own blogs and forums. Students were then invited to vote for a winner, with the contest promoted extensively in print, online, television and through “election campaigns” in the schools.

 More than 20,000 votes were counted, and the contest website attracted 160,000 unique users. Seven hundred students attended the award ceremony at a local disco.

The newspaper plans to expand the content in future by making “Coolest Teacher” a brand of its own, with its own clothing line and other products, by getting more support from the schools, by finding more partners and advertisers to cut costs (10,000 Euros, not including staff costs) and make a profit, and by expanding it nationally.

Break Up Their Routine!

The best thing newspapers can do to build loyalty among young people and their parents is to make learning fun.

Svobodnyi Kurs and the regional Russian publisher Alta Press did just that - and pleased an advertiser, a local bank that sponsored the contest, as well.

The Russian regional press group created a contest, in the form of a ‘quest’, in which teams of high school economics students were required to complete certain tasks at a certain time - take a quiz, finding and correcting mistakes in an article, city orienteering and more.

Ten teams of seven youngers were required to do five tasks within 30 days. The students were alerted to the tasks, their time limits and locations - through the local newspaper, websites and through e-mails, social networks and text messages.

The teams gained points for the successful completion of the tasks, with the leaders at the end of the month competing in a final where they were required to make presentations, and defend them in front of a jury, on a theme of great interest to the sponsoring bank, “Bank of the Future: Prospective Customers’ Views”.

“Svobodnyi Kurs has found a creative and easily transferable way to monetize young reader activities that target a variety of age groups,” says Ms Timokina. “The newspaper has already received three proposals from other business organisations for joint participation in future projects.”

Monday’s last session was devoted to circulation-building ideas

Getting Help From New Places

Ms Woodcock’s presentation profiled three newspapers with profitable strategies that expanded their reach and brands and connected with new audiences - parents with young children, and students.

The Record, in Hackensack, New Jersey, created Parent Talks, three lecture programme for parents with young children that aimed to provide expert advice on current educational topics; create a partnership with community educational experts and the local university; promote the newspaper as good community partner; raise Newspapers in Education funds through exhibitor fees; and develop the contact database.

“What they discovered was that audience attendance grew at each subsequent event, the newspaper was able to brand itself with the community in a new way, and a growing number of vendors were able to meet with parents in a way they had not been able to before,” says Ms Woodcock.

The South Florida Sun-Sentinel created Teen Talk, a weekly, profit-making magazine aimed at 14- to 18-year olds that also aimed to save the paper’ decade-old student journalism program. The magazine, with a student staff of 100 reporters, is distributed to schools and libraries and has a circulation of 72,500.

The Herald-Tribune Media Group, also in Florida, created a “design a bag art contest” for 11-year olds in 27 newspaper markets to decorate shopping bags with an environmental theme for a local supermarket. In addition to creating an innovative partnership with the supermarket, the program rolled out a 20-page environmental education curriculum for local schools. The project ultimately reached more than 17,000 teaches and 375,000 students in five states.

Internet and the Family

Parents who are concerned about their children’s internet habits - and they should be- now have a new resource to help them guide their children to safe online practices.

Ms Morduchowicz presented “Internet and the Family,” a guide produced in association with the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA). The guide is being offered to newspapers to use in circulation-building promotions.

The guide provides a general orientation for parents on how to help their children online, without demonising the internet. It covers protection and security issues, how to avoid risky sites, how to determine trustworthy content, and how to create a family code of online content.

The guide was produced after an Argentinean study of young people and their parents found little monitoring of online behaviour, little knowledge of risky practices, and little discussion among families about what children were doing online.

The study found that many adolescents believe that only their friends can read their blogs and that they are unaware of the dangers of posting personal information or photos on the web. The majority trust what they read on the internet and say their parents don’t know what they do online.

Internet and the Family is available from WAN-IFRA. Requests for the publication should be made to Millie Cherfils, Coordinator of Young Reader Programmes, by e-mail to millie.cherfils@wan-ifra.org.