#Use The News: 2024 - The year of the news
This year marks the 75th anniversary of the Basic Law. And #UseTheNews is proclaiming the Year of News with a major project plan.
News media, journalists and publishing houses have been working for years to make high-quality journalism attractive to young people - for example, by increasing their presence on social media platforms, adopting digital marketing strategies or orienting themselves towards the formats used by influencers to cultivate their communities. Promising strategies that remain moderately successful, however: general interest in news is at an all-time low.
The problem appears to be structural in nature - it is not individual shortcomings in established journalistic practice that are responsible for young target groups following news less than previous generations. Accordingly, the solution cannot simply lie in modernizing individual aspects of journalism - the problem of news media must first be truly understood.
How to make journalism attractive to young people?
To this end, the German Press Agency dpa launched a project in 2020 with the aim of understanding the problem of young journalists from the ground up - #UseTheNews.
In order to find a systematic solution to the crisis facing news media, #UseTheNews first conducted a comprehensive baseline study to test assumptions that the media industry makes about young people's news consumption: the monolithic target group of teenagers and young adults that many media professionals and publishing houses want to reach with their offerings does not exist in this uniformity.
Rather, as in previous generations, there are various subgroups within Generation Z that differ in their news orientation in terms of interest and information.
The study distinguishes between
- Journalistically information-oriented
- Slightly information-oriented
- Extensively information-oriented
- Non-journalistic information-oriented.
This is a first step towards developing better news offerings for young people that match their news consumption, level of information and interest.
However, although it is not necessarily true that young target groups are generally less interested in news, the proportion of less information-oriented people among 14 to 24-year-olds is significantly higher at one third.
This important finding forms the basis for the further work of #UseTheNews: In addition to the first, most important pillar of the basic studies that #UseTheNews carries out with the Hans Bredow Institute in Hamburg, there are two further pillars. A practical pillar, the News Literacy Lab, in which #UseTheNews works with project partners to implement pilot projects that explore which practical changes in journalism can help make news more accessible to young people.
And an educational pillar, Open News Education or "ONE", in which educational projects with nationwide partner institutions raise awareness among the young target group about the importance of news. The individual tracks of #UseTheNews work together on larger projects, such as the #UseTheNews Playbook, to ensure that all perspectives are included in the outcome.
2024 - the year of the message
This year marks the 75th anniversary of the Basic Law. And #UseTheNews is proclaiming the Year of News with a major project plan to draw particular attention to the fifth article of the Basic Law, which guarantees freedom of expression and freedom of the press. An occasion that is particularly important for a project like #UseTheNews: #UseTheNews is committed to making people aware of how important this freedom is for them personally and supporting them in using this freedom for themselves by engaging with news again.
The Year of News will therefore draw particular attention to the important role that professional journalism plays in a functioning democracy - with a major, nationwide image campaign that #UseTheNews is carrying out together with major media houses such as SPIEGEL, WDR, MDR, ZDF and ZEIT. Under the motto "Trust news that is true, instead of creating a mood", the aim is to raise awareness of high-quality journalism among the general public and work against disinformation.
To the website
#Use The News
The Social News Desk
The heart of the Year of News is the Social News Desk, an experimental format in which young people themselves have the opportunity to work with #UseTheNews experts on a weekly basis to address important topics that are in the news and report on them on social media in a way that is appropriate for the target group - and to learn from the process and the results.
"We see the Social News Desk as a kind of laboratory for a new form of social media journalism," says Vanessa Bitter, who is in charge of the Year of News as project manager with her colleague Lara Gorski.
"Every week, we will discuss a topic transparently in a livestream and at an open editorial conference and prepare contributions on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube Shorts, i.e. only in 9:16 formats."
The main aim is to rethink journalistic formats and try things out: "We want to involve the young target group very intensively," continues Bitter. "At the end of the year of news, we ideally want to have a playbook again, to know exactly what we can do better and to be able to give it to our media partners."
Newscamps
The third component of the Year of News are news camps: festivals with talks by speakers such as influencers Fabian Krischka or Aminata Belli, flanked by workshops for pupils, young people and teachers, which on the one hand educate and raise awareness of the topic, but on the other hand provide concrete insights into journalistic work and invite young people to join the "NewZee network" of #UseTheNews.
"A news camp is to take place in every federal state in the coming year, ideally linked to a larger event and supported by us and our media partners and partner schools," explains Lara Gorski, who is primarily responsible for the NewZee community as a project assistant at UseTheNews. "So that we don't just reach young people who live in the big cities, so that young people also come into contact with the local newsrooms in their area."
Model projects
This focus on local newsrooms and educational work in schools will be further intensified with the fourth and final pillar of the Year of News: Model projects, which the #UseTheNews team implements together with selected local newsrooms and schools from the region. What exactly the project ultimately looks like is not strictly defined, but depends on the topics covered in the project - in other words, on what is currently happening in the region where the project is to take place.
"We enter into an exchange with the respective partners and find a suitable topic: how does climate change affect the environment of a school class in East Frisia, for example?" Lara Gorski cites as an example. "The projects then develop in such a way that the pupils write their own articles for a local newspaper from their region and thus support the editorial team, but also learn from them and get to know them, all under one roof: this is a cooperation project between a school class and an editorial team."
#UseTheNews looks to the future
The challenges that #UseTheNews is responding to are far from over: the increasing number of headlines in times of crisis and the rapid development of stories from complex contexts have been causing a decline in interest in news for a few years now, and not just among young people. This is accompanied by a declining willingness to pay and a longing for simple narratives - which unfortunately are usually found in less well-researched sources.
But as part of projects such as the Social News Desk, media partners from all over Germany find an experimental space at UseTheNews where they can tackle the problem together with experts and based on well-founded studies.
"I think it's important to start by setting the hook: reaching people," says Vanessa Bittner. "And when we find answers to this key question: How do we reach people, what does a format have to do for young people? Then we can develop a strategy from this. But first of all, it is crucial to pick up the young people again. To show them: You can find reliable news with us. The quality media are an anchor in a world that is now flooded with information."
