The young are not abandoning newsbrands
Alarm bells rang when YouGov reported that almost one third of young adults say they have not read a newspaper in the last 12 months, however people seem to have forgotten that this means that 70% of young adults do read newspapers. The young are not abandoning newsbrands and newsbrands are far from dead, says Carat’s associate director Stephanie Arlett.
A few weeks ago a YouGov survey found that almost one third of young adults claim to have not read a newspaper in the last 12 months. This led to some alarming headlines about young people ‘abandoning’ newspapers.
However, from a more positive perspective, that means that more than 70% of 18-24 year olds do read newspapers.
The latest data from NRS PADD 2012 supports this, showing that 77% of 18-24s read a newspaper on a monthly basis – if you include online readership this figure jumps to 85%. Not a bad effort in the context of our fiercely competitive and increasingly fragmented news landscape.
Arguably, newspapers have always grappled with how to attract a young audience – this is nothing new. YouGov has unsurprisingly found the Metro, Evening Standard, the Sun and the Guardian to have the highest readership amongst 18-24 year olds – the highest being the Metro at 27%.
If you look at NRS trend data over the last 10 years the 18-24 readership profile of newspapers has stayed pretty static. In fact some have increased. In 2003 both the Guardian’s and the Evening Standard’s 18-24 year old readership profile was 11%. In 2012 this grew to 12% and 14%, respectively.
Moreover, we should remind ourselves that newspapers are no longer just papers; they are newsbrands, operating across multiple channels. Newsbrands today have more opportunities than ever to engage audiences with their content, be it in print, online, on tablet, mobile, or through social media.
YouGov found that the 18-24 age group was most likely to have read newspaper content online in the last 12 months.
Newsbrands can reach younger audiences by utilising different platforms and delivering content in a way that is more relevant to them. The Daily Mail is a great example of this. According to NRS PADD 2012, 18% of 18-24 read the Daily Mail on a monthly basis, but more than one third visited Mail Online. Similarly, the Daily Telegraph can offer a younger audience on its mobile platform where the average age of the reader is 35, as opposed to 61 for the newspaper.
It is also encouraging that we have new entrants into our newsbrand market. The Huffington Post launched its digital-only proposition in the UK in July 2011. It aims to do something different and has an interesting mix of original reporting, blog posts and an open strategy sharing stories from other newsbrands.
We should also not forget the amazing success of ‘i’, which achieved a circulation of nearly 300,000 in just over two years – more than the Guardian and the Independent combined!
The young are not abandoning newsbrands and newsbrands are far from dead. Strong brands that get their multi-platform strategies right and, importantly, find ways to monetise them will prevail.
As Rufus Olins, Chief Executive of Newsworks rightly told MediaWeek: “The revolution in digital technology has provided the newspaper industry with an extraordinary opportunity to increase its reach and influence… newspapers are just one part of a modern news brand that young people certainly are reading.”