One Giant Experiment
Posted by anastasia on 12-21-2005Guest post from Hillary Rhodes, former editor of Your Mom and currently at ASAP (AP's new service targeting 25-34s):
The powers that be at the QC Times (in Davenport, Iowa) and Lee Enterprises (headquartered in same city) have decided to pull the plug on the print version of the nationally award-winning teen publication Your Mom. The last print edition comes out this week. It will still exist online.
For me, it's a black spot on the grand experiment of youth journalism. Not that Your Mom — weekly, 16-page, quarter tab — was an exceptional exhibition of flawless teen reportage, but it was trying (and apparently failed) to reach large numbers of young readers, and to introduce them to the idea that newspapers play an important role in a community.
What this decision proves to me, first, is that all this well-intentioned babble about "investment in future readers" translates to "investment in winning youth-oriented advertising." And since Your Mom failed in that arena, the costly print edition was deemed a failure over all (or at least not worth it).
Newsletter readers: Come to Ypulse.com for the rest of Hillary's post.
It's sad, especially to me personally, as the founding editor of that once-highly successful publication. However, there's a more positive way to analyze it:
I've begun to think of youth journalism as one giant experiment, like trying to cure cancer. There are tons of efforts out there trying to find the secret recipe, and lots of failures among them. As a scientist, you might spend your days tediously mixing, measuring, timing and waiting, all to discover in the end that no, this particular combination of chemicals ALSO fails to cure cancer. But even the failures bring you one step closer to the cure, or secret solution. I guess it's a sort of learn-from-your-mistakes philosophy, and we're all in it together, learning from each other. One day we might find the answer (although by then today's teenagers might be married with kids!)
Your Mom was a huge success in many ways, least of all for my own career and personal development. But also in a major way for many teenagers in the community it serves, many of whom are actively pursuing careers in journalism, and many of whom are now more in tune with local media or news in general.
We pushed the envelope and opened up important conversations among teenagers about everything from politics to religion to body image, relationship with parents, romantic relationships, sex, drugs and lots of rock and roll. We explored whether local teens join youth groups just because they're trendy. We broke news about a local high schooler who started an anonymous Xanga wherein she/he listed by name different "popular" senior girls and made fun of them. Recently, under the new leadership (editor Sarah Rice), Your Mom sent a teen reporter to cover the murder trial of a teen on trial for killing another teen. Heavy, sensitive stuff. We consistently covered big issues that mattered to teens of the community, the adults of tomorrow. We put their pictures in there, we put their stories in there, we put pieces of their intelligent online dialogues in there.
It is sad that such efforts are not being rewarded, but are in fact being underappreciated by the parent newspaper that at first thrived on the attention it received for such a bold initiative. You could blame the teens: "They didn't read it enough to win big advertising, which makes it not monetarily feasible." You could blame the editor: "There wasn't enough compelling content in there." But I think that the blame lies in the fact that money makes the world go 'round. And the fact that we, like many before us, were not apparently able to mix the right ingredients together to find the secret, ever-elusive solution to reaching the feisty, easily distracted, media-bombarded, busy, busy, busy, ultra-savvy young-reader demo.
I now work for the AP's youth reader initiative out of New York, asap. I think of it, too, as part of the grand experiment, although our target demo is a little older (25-34). I think the content we churn out on a daily basis is incredible, my colleagues are all quite sharp and the editor at the helm (Ted Anthony) is ambitious and insightful. I think it's a promising project, and I'm eager to see it develop. Who knows, THIS could finally be the cure for the perennially pesky problem of appealing to young readers.
Feel free to e-mail me: hrhodes@ap.org
Note from Anastasia: Yesterday the Chicago Sun Times also announced it will be closing its youth-oriented tabloid Red Streak while the Chicago Tribune announce it will be dropping the 25 cent charge for its youth-oriented tabloid Red Eye.
