Young readers vital for success

THE ability of newspapers to attract young readers determine their future success, the World Association of Newspapers congress in Dublin was told yesterday.

Faced with increasing competition from a variety of hi-tech media including the internet, several speakers highlighted the problem for newspapers in attracting young audiences.

The future for the industry was the focus of the final session of the four-day congress at the RDS, which was attended by 1,200 publishers and editors of the world’s leading newspapers.

Jim Chisolm of the World Association of Newspapers said numerous studies of newspaper readership around the world had shown a decline in the number of young adults using the medium. However, Mr Chisolm said newspapers should also benefit from increasing audience fragmentation through continued growth in the number of new radio and TV stations. “One of the advantages of this development is that newspapers will become the dominant mass medium,” he predicted.

How newspapers delivered relevance and value for money would be a key to maintaining and increasing their readership in the future, he added.

His colleague, Aralynn McMane, WAN’s director of development and education, said that many newspapers were failing to connect with their young readers.

Ms McMane said it was also a popular myth among newspapers that they could always attract young readers when they got older. “If you don’t get them young, you are not going to get them later,” said Ms McMane.

She warned that demographic changes in the future would lead to a sharp decline in newspaper readership unless editors were prepared to put strategies in place to make their publications appeal to younger audiences.

The benefits of such forward planning included the potential for increased circulation, sponsorship and government funding, said MsMcMane.

Henri Pigeat, the former president of the French news agency, AFP, claimed the slow decline of daily newspapers could not be blamed solely on technical and economic factors. In particular, he expressed concern that the perception that newspapers provided greater reliability and quality of information than radio and TV was changing.

Janet Robinson, the president and general manager of the New York Times, told the congress that nobody had been as hard on the newspaper as its own management and staff over the recent controversy that one of its young reporters had fabricated dozens of stories.

Ms Robinson accepted that the NY Times competitors were justified in their criticism of its editorial system that had allowed the deceptions carried out by the journalist, Jayson Blair. She admitted that the controversy, which resulted in the resignation of its two most senior editors last week, was one of the most difficult periods in the 152-year history of the newspaper.However, Ms Robinson claimed the newspaper’s decision to print a 7,400 word correction piece, coupled with the appointment of a new committee to examine editorial systems demonstrated the NY Times’ commitment to maintaining the highest standards of integrity and journalism.

Meanwhile, members of the Falun Gong religious movement staged a protest outside the congress against representatives of the Chinese press. A spokesperson for the Irish Falun Gong Information Centre said it objected to the attendance of Chinese newspaper executives because of their failure to highlight persecution of its followers in China.