Editor’s Note: This article was written for Mosaic, an independent journalism training program for high school and college students who report and photograph stories under the guidance of professional journalists.
I’m a news editor at my school newspaper, The Voice, in Fremont. Every month, when we make our rounds to distribute newspapers to our classmates, more of my peers decline to take one. I’ve had my fair share of awkward stares and mumbled “no”s as students look back at their phone screens in response, as I ask them if they’d like a newspaper.
It’s a feeling shared by other student journalists. Janet Guan, opinions editor at Mission San Jose High’s student paper, The Smoke Signal, said, “In recent years, the enthusiasm for reading news and just reading our school’s paper has declined.”
At its core, journalism is meant to disseminate news to the public to keep them informed about the world around them in an accessible way.
So when news outlets are struggling to keep the attention of a generation that consumes information in 20-second TikToks and Instagram Reels, I can’t help but wonder: by not doing a better job at adapting to a younger audience, is traditional news still serving its fundamental purpose?
It’s no secret that fewer youth are receiving information from comprehensive newspaper articles and that many get their information from social media. A 2022 survey conducted by Statistica on Gen Z young adults found that 50% of respondents said they used social media most frequently to get their news. In contrast, the poll showed that less than 7% of respondents get their news from cable news, local newspapers or national newspapers.
It’s not that my peers don’t care about what’s happening in the world — getting information from social media is just easier. Social media allows us to scroll through clips of politicians in Congress engaged in debates, commentators discussing the government shutdown or creators breaking down global events, and much of it is presented in the punchy, all-lowercase-text that young people are so familiar with.
This isn’t the first time technology has changed the way people consume information. “Every single technological development with regard to the spread of information has been criticized for reducing people’s attention spans. In a way, journalism has always been ‘dying,’ ” said Francis Luo (no relation), an arts and entertainment reporter for The Daily Californian at UC Berkeley.
The introduction of the radio and broadcast television brought with it criticism from newspapers, which argued that broadcast news was too fast and sensational to be considered valuable journalism.
Despite these initial doubts, broadcast television has adapted to become an important part of the media landscape. For example, PBS, which was established after the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, provided reliable coverage of major events after its inception, which ranged from the 1973 Watergate scandal to the September 11 attacks, helping turn broadcasting television into an accessible source of news and education.
Social media may seem like the latest threat to journalism, but it doesn’t have to be that way.In response to trends in viewership patterns, some publications are making shifts toward social media in an effort to reach a younger demographic. In 2022, the Los Angeles Times launched 404, a project that creates reliable, short-form video stories for TikTok and Instagram, with the goal of appealing to a Gen-Z and millennial audience.
Creating news content for social media is still a developing process with problems that need to be addressed. For one thing, social media is filled with content creators who can post anything they want, regardless of whether it’s fact-checked or researched, potentially spreading misleading information.
This is where traditional media outlets have a chance to use professional reporting and the power of social media to both reach a wider audience and show youth what credible journalism looks like.
I’m not saying that youth should view social media as a replacement for reading news. Short-form content limits how much you can understand about an issue. But traditional news outlets can use it strategically, by creating posts and short clips about news to reach a wider audience, which also direct viewers to longer-form articles on the same subjects. Viewers can then decide which stories to read and learn more about.
I see this as an opportunity for journalism to prove that, just as it has done time and time again, news outlets will find the best ways to change and meet their audiences where they are.
Sophie Luo is a member of the class of 2027 at Irvington High School in Fremont.