Thunderbird editors Brad Badelt and Richard Warnica, an online magazine out of the University of British Columbia's J-School addressed an open letter to Noah Godfrey the publisher of Dose, a daily newsmagazine and web portal trageted to the young launch in five Canadian cities, from the young to the young.
CanWest, the Canadian media giant venture will not help CanWest to get young readers for their newspaper and might also be the wrong steps to serve the needs and wants of the young and the community!
From Jay Rosen summary
"From what we understand, Dose is to be of the youth, for the youth and by the youth. But we wonder, Noah, how much you really have in common, beyond age, with other young Canadians. Readership interests are more complex than age breakdowns allow. For instance, how representative is your background, which includes an Ivy League education, of the experience of the average Canadian?
And do young people even want to hear exclusively from the young? The hippest media figure among the urban, intelligent and fun – your target market – is Jon Stewart, a middle-aged
white guy in a suit.
But as much as we mock, we know Dose is no joke. What worries us, beyond the title and hyper-charged marketing, is the implicit admission that mainstream daily newspapers are giving up on youth.
Canada is a country of far more than two solitudes. Newspapers should bridge those divides, not pander to them. If every demographic gets its own news, from its own source, with its own spin, what kind of consensus or democracy can we hope to create? The 18-34 year-old age group lives in the same cities, works at the same jobs and votes in the same elections as every other adult Canadian. Youth should participate in the same debates about how the country is run. And that won’t happen if mainstream news culls them from the herd."Read the open letter under
Additional readings: Why is it suddenly hot for news to be cool?
"In the battle for young readers, traditional news sources seem to have given
up the fight and birthed a new generation of products targeted solely at the
young. But is niche marketing really the way to go? by ROB ANNANDALE"
