I believe the culture of the newspaper reader is a learned experience.

When we were young, our fathers studied the headlines and front page stories at the breakfast table, our moms followed the Home pages and we all caught up with what we missed when the evening edition hit the doorstep.

Later, when you moved into your first apartment, you got your phone, your electricity and your newspaper subscription. It was your passage into adulthood.

Gone are the days of the one income household. Mom and dad barely have time nowadays for each other let alone sitting down with a newspaper. Kids are taxied from school event to playdate. The only experience with newsprint for many kids is a classroom workshop.

Newspapers need to understand this fundamental change in their audience.

How do you introduce yourself to a youth market that has little connection to the news”paper” culture?

Newspapers have to refocus their efforts from cost cutting and old institutional thinking and reinvent the idea of a “newspaper”.

Use the strengths of the newspaper:

brand trust
expert opinion
an authoritative voice in the community
the experience and skills of dozens (or hundreds) of editors and reporters
an understanding of its community

We shouldn’t see this as a curtain call on the industry, but as an opportunity to create a new “newspaper”.

A “newspaper” that incorporates this strength, gives a community voice and embraces technology.

Yes, my playing Super Mario Bros 24×7 as a kid faded away. That’s because the old Nintendo Famicom didn’t do much except games.
However, my zest for PCs grew up with me from an old XT with a game or two. The same foundations come into play when I use the computer for “serious” things today.

I am confident that kids who are on Facebook or MySpace, and many of whom already talk about blogs, tags, RSS and such – have a “mental infrastructure” as well as know-how that will grow up with them.

It will stick even when their interests change and they’re looking for news or a job rather than their friend’s latest poke (although you never grow out of that (-: )

My four year old, seven year old, and yes, iPhone hacking 13 year, old also enjoy books most of all.

I think it has to do with the paramount importance of the story as the most effective human communication, and the book and drama tell the story most effectively. I think even more effectively than film.

Thanks for the intriguing ideas,

Steve

nmw

The connecting string between my childhood activities and my adult activities is that both inspire me and feed my love of creativity.

Looking at the kids of today to predict the adults of tomorrow often forgets that little thing called “growing up.” Or perhaps its just… growing.
Have a nice evening.
-Dan

I became a huge baseball fan.

Back then, about the only way to follow my favorite team every day was to read the newspaper.

I could listen to the radio, and I often listened to the radio, and once in a while, especially when they were playing the hated Dodgers, they were on TV — but every morning, I couldn’t wait to read about my team. I loved reading the post-game commentary and quotes from the players.

I don’t think I looked at any other section of the paper until I was maybe 12 and became a paperboy for the Evening Tribune, but by then I had already published my first newspaper — a four-page mimographed one-time periodical for my fourth-grade class (next edition didn’t come out until 5th grade, and I wouldn’t be a publish again until after college).

I’ve just got to believe that that early love affair with the sports section of my home town newspaper set me up for a life-time romance with newspapers.

I’m very duel-minded about media today. I still prefer reading the news in paper, but I very much believe in the future of the newspaper.com; however, I think that duelity is one thing that leads me to push so hard for creating local news sites that just create the local news paper online.

People don’t read newspapers as much as they used to not because the alternatives are more convenient or better (they are not); they don’t them any more because they are no longer relevant to their busy, multi-faceted, more individualized lives.

Or something like that.

Kids today — if the mobile device in their hands is what turns them on to being information omnivores, then it will be the mobile device they most cling to when they’re 50, no matter what comes along later, I think.

And that brings us around to what may ultimately kill newspapers … kids today just don’t get turned on to them like they used to, so for those of use who believe in the civic value of journalism (especially the brand practiced by newspapers), how are we going to keep that craft alive and still appeal to future generations?

Congratulations on the most literary reference I’ve ever seen on a blog comment, which is much appreciated by this former english major.

To Fred’s Wordsworth

(So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;)