For the past year and a half, I've been studying surveys and listening in on conference calls about today's youth content consumer -- I won't call them news consumers because they mostly don't -- and one of the things that seems to define them is that they prefer to learn about stuff from their friends.
And MySpace and all the other social tools kids are growing up with these days makes it possible for teens today to survey their peers with lightning speed. 
Researchers are calling today's youth The Millennials. Today I watched one member of the Millennial cohort -- Franny -- demonstrate just why the news business is in trouble.
Today, there was a shooting down on Alki -- a beach community near here. Franny heard the news report about that from a friend of hers on MySpace. 
She seemed really interested in the story, so I asked her if she checked seattlepi.com for our story.
She looked at me like, What planet are you from? She was gentle, though. "No," she says. "I learned what I needed from my friend. He lives right there."
The news industry is going to shrink. A lot.
Sunday, October 14, 2007
The Future of News
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5 comments:
Later, I was looking at the P-I story, and Franny asked what happened. It looks like they don't know yet, I said. The story just says the police are investigating.
That's stupid, she said. The reporter should be fired if he can't find out anything.
Just got back from Starbucks -- 6 tables, 4 newspaper readers(two at one table) -- two of them noticeably older than me the other two, a couple, a little younger than me. They probably work for the Register ...
haha,
well i thought you where goin to put the party about how the pi wrote this story on how the suspect was gone and no where to be found.. and yet they dont have a suspect.. so how do they know hes gone?
oops, i ment to say part not party :)
Last I checked the P-I hadn't returned to this story and answered any of Franny's questions.
Maybe she should be running this place.
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