If Only All Families Would Follow Arnold Swarzenegger’s Newspaper Philosophy: “We’re Teaching Our Kids To Read The Newspaper in the Morning.”

Philip M. Stone November 16, 2006

California Governor Arnold Swarzenegger wants his kids addicted to newspapers. Now that’s one addiction we can all agree upon!

Swarzenegger told The Los Angeles Times that he and his wife “are teaching our children to read the paper in the morning. We started with their favorite section, with Patrick it’s sports. One of the girls looks for the fashion thing, and the other looks for movies. We’re teaching them that when they get up in the morning and come down and make breakfast, read a page. Whatever your favorite page is, we want to create this thing that gets you addicted to it.”

Now surely some smart newspaper marketing folks can turn that into a real campaign to get the young reading the newspaper. Everyone knows it is the young who prefer to get their news from the Internet and it’s the older folks that tend to rely more upon newspapers, so whatever it takes to train the young at an early stage to get used to reading a newspaper has to be worth its weight in gold. The young will still flock to the Internet, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be in the daily habit of reading a newspaper.

The newspaper, of course, has to have the editorial product that will appeal to the young – focusing on youth activities, what’s going on at the local schools. To use Swarzenegger’s examples, the sports pages need to cover local high school sports events, the fashion pages need to have articles showing what is “neat” to the young, and lifestyle has to report on what’s “hot” in all the various parts of the entertainment world.

But for families to teach the kids to read at least one page a day has to be a goal for every newspaper publisher. Now, we won’t get into the manners debate of what it is like to be at the dining table and everyone is reading a newspaper when perhaps that should be quality time for the family to be talking to one another, but those issues can be worked out.

Getting newspapers in the hands of the young has long been understood to be a good thing for the newspaper industry. That’s why the Newspaper in Education program began in 1955, providing newspapers to schools at reduced rates, Besides helping the children with literacy, it also gets children into the habit of reading newspapers – no bad thing.

But with newspaper circulation on the slide and publishers looking for every way they can to cut costs there are reports that some are cutting back on the discounts offered to schools. Others are stripping out such bulk sales from their circulation numbers since the advertiser is not really interested in school children and so the program loses its usefulness to shortsighted publishers. Talk about shooting one’s self in one’s foot!

The Newspaper in Education t program involves teaching aides and the like and it does not come cheaply. Some newspapers spread the costs by inviting community businesses to help sponsor the program – those businesses of course being named in news stories about the program.

A teacher in Mississippi summed up why the program is so important to the industry. “The favorite thing the kids like about the newspaper is when we do a scavenger hunt with it. They learn where everything is located in the paper and get to have fun while they are learning…It’s amazing to me that seventh graders (12-13-year-olds) don’t know where or what the classifieds are. Most of them have had absolutely no exposure to the newspaper.”

And getting to the kids when they are really young is all-important, according to Margaret Vassilikos, senior vice president and treasurer of the Newspaper Association of America (NAA).

She told the NAA’s Young Reader Conference, “A lot of newspapers focus on young adults 18 and over. Surveys continuously show that children  are making decisions about their reading habits at 13. Eighteen is almost too late.”

And while about 220 US newspapers have special teen pages or sections just having that is not enough to keep young people reading newspapers, according to Jim Abbott, vice president of the NAA Foundation. He says there needs to be something on every page of the newspaper to reflect what teens are thinking about, what they are talking about and how it all impacts their lives.

One way to capture the young is to offer them articles written by their peers That is why the move by Gannett, the largest US newspaper publisher, last week to convert all of its newsrooms –eh, no, now they are called information centers – to crowdsourcing – that’s a new buzz word with which you need to become familiar meaning that you need to put your readers to work for you providing information --  is absolutely revolutionary.

Under the Gannett plan for its 90 newspapers, local news takes precedence over national news; newspapers must publish more user-generated content; information centers must become 24/7 with the websites powering the news flow; and crowdsourcing puts the public to work providing information.

“Implementing the Center quickly is essential,” said CEO Craig Dubow in an email to Gannett staff. “Our industry is changing in ways that create great opportunity for Gannett.”

“This is a huge restructuring for us,” said Michael Maness, VP for strategic planning. “We’re going to restructure everything in how we gather news and information. We’ll shift our eyes and ears on the ground from reporters to the crowds.”

Gannett officials say this is all about reorganizing how a newspaper works. They are not going to fire staff just because more information comes in direct from the public, but they will retrain people so that, for instance, a photographer can also take video for the web site.

It’s all part of how newspapers need to reinvent themselves. It’s called survival.

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