The media landscape is changing at pace – and keeping up with the latest developments and moves will give every comms expert an advantage over their rivals. Every week take a look at the media business from mainstream and ‘legacy’ media to cutting edge tech and the latest trends and developments – and how you can use that know-how.
It’s the holy grail for publishers – not just how to make money now but how to attract a younger community who will stay engaged and will be the audience for years to come.
So interesting research from the Press Gazette earlier this month on how the UK’s top 50 publishers are getting on with finding and keeping readers who are under 35.
And I say with some confidence that you’ll never guess which publication has the highest number of under 35s as a percentage of its readers. The Financial Times. Nearly 27% of their readers are under 35 – and even more impressively that younger age group represent 36% of time spent on the FT’s online platforms and its distributed content (on Apple News etc).
That is a phenomenal success – probably aided by business subscriptions and a young, wealthy workforce working in finance.
Beyond the FT though, the figures show a more difficult trend. The Guardian has the second highest percentage of under 35s with just under one in four of its readers in that age group. But they make up less than 8% of the time spent engaging with its content.
The Times and Sunday Times have similar figures. The Telegraph, Mail, Express and Star can get barely 4% of engagement time from under 35s.
In other words, no mainstream publisher can get young people to stay with their content for any length of time.
It’s perhaps not a huge surprise. Younger people consume news in different ways. Publishers are slowly learning that you can’t just make a younger generation consume news like baby boomers do.
It explains why there’s a push away from home sites as a front door (and Google changes have made getting them to that front door more difficult than ever) to going to the places where younger consumers take in their information. That means TikTok, Instagram, WhatsApp and YouTube (Facebook as well – although again that site is trending towards an audience who is a bit older). Interestingly, Ofcom suggests 21% of UK adults have used AI for news in the past month.
There are ways that publishers are making that happen. Turning journalists into personalities on podcasts, YouTube and Substack. Concentrating on explaining the news and the behind the scenes views rather than straight reporting. And ideally in a way that is short and to the point and tells why it matters to the viewer.
So, in this changing landscape, what does it mean for PRs and Comms experts? Here are nine ideas on how you might want to change your thinking
Stop measuring success by the masthead alone
A piece in a major newspaper may still be valuable for credibility and what your clients want to see, but it doesn’t automatically mean you’ve reached a large young audience. Increasingly, persuade clients to move away from this as the only metric.
Pitch to the journalist, not the publication
Journalists, including staffers on national papers, are increasingly being encouraged to develop their personal brand on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok and Substack or similar sites. The individual journalist’s distribution network can therefore matter as much as or even more than the publication’s brand.
So look at their social following, their YouTube presence, podcasts they appear on, the formats in which they communicate best and what their audience responds to.
Give journalists something that works on video
