BitDepth#1455
Mark Lyndersay
FT STRATEGIES'S next generation news report found six areas of engagement where traditional media organisations might make inroads with a youthful news audience.
The next generation news report offered six strategies for media houses to consider. Building affinity. Enhancing customisation and personalisation. Developing socially native content. Matching language to audience. Adapting to consumption patterns. Empowering readers with information and guidance.
Building affinity demands a fundamental rethinking of how and who in news delivery. Credibility has become personal. Who is delivering the news and what is understood about them is becoming as important as the journalism itself.
Journalists who are seen as identifiable personalities with perspectives that align with their intended audience won't be influencers in the traditional reading of the term, but they will win a more attentive ear. The era of the faceless, opinion-free news drone is over now.
Advisory board members for the project suggested partnerships with independent creators and cultivating diverse approaches to delivery in the newsroom as potential strategies.
Developing news teams that embrace diversity and authenticity in their reporting while following established journalism structure and accountability is another.
What does customisation and personalisation mean in the context of news consumption?
Ruona J Meyer, an investigative journalist and advisory board member, suggested that introducing options to filter news at source might create customised experiences for audiences.
"If you go to a shopping site you can filter down to the colour, size, etc. Why can't we filter this way for news?"
That represents a big change from the serendipity of adjacency that has eternally been an underpinning of traditional news discovery.
On social media, algorithms do this type of filtering for the user based on their experience on the platform.
News delivery that aspires to be more than an information dump from broadcast or print channels must adapt to this online expectation, but it's going to be an uphill effort for media organisations used to serving news buffet style to design
à la carte service.
And the best systems are programmed into the digital delivery system, not bolted on.
Artificial intelligence offers options to summarise and bullet point complex stories on the fly for TLDR readers. Newsletters that deliver links to selected content offer an easy start to offering consumption customisation.
The news audience has moved from the computer to the smartphone. Delivery must be designed for mobile first to stand any chance of engaging a young audience.
Deep-dive journalism remains a point of distinction and strength for news media, but presenting it as a
fait accompli is no longer enough.
With social media positioned as the preferred news discovery medium for next-generation audiences (despite vigorous claims to the contrary from Meta), the importance of recasting news as native
