Free newspapers made to entice younger audiences

Young readership has been in decline in the United States and recently in France as well. Most of this decline is due to the lack of desire to read newspapers and due to the rise of numerous electronic gadgets. With the rise of technology, the younger population has lost interest in reading.

Some newspapers began appealing to the younger population by developing news applications for phones, iPods, Blackberries and other mobile gadgets. The actual paper copies have been in less popular demand as the whole population, not just the younger population, turns to online newspapers, mobile applications or not reading the newspaper at all.

According to the State of News Media: An Annual Report on American Journalism, the industry is still profitable, even though there are declines in readership, hopefully some new investments as well as staff cuts will bring the industry back to the top. In France, newspaper readership is also in decline due to the lack of young readership. According to The New York Times, Eric Pfanner stated that, "only [ten] percent of those aged 15 to 24 read a paid-for newspaper daily in 2007."

There is a new project titled, "My Free Newspaper," in which 18 - 25-year-olds are offered "a free, year long subscription to a newspaper of their choice." French papers are hoping that afterwards more people will be willing to sign up for the paper when they get older.

Not everyone is happy with this idea to France, which is similar to free The New York Times copies that students get at the University. Former media editor of the French newspaper Le Figaro, Emmanuel Schwartzenberg stated in his book, that "when advertising is in steep decline, newspapers should instead be looking at ways to raise more revenue from readers, rather than giving papers away."

The true value of newspapers lies in the paper publications are not as popular as they were when they first began (i.e. the first English version was said to have been published in 1620 in Amsterdam). Countries that have reported a decline in readership were the U.S. and France, while other countries overseas have not stated anything to that degree.

According to CNET news, "…the Audit Bureau of Circulations, which audits the paid circulation figures of publications, noted the six-month average for the Top 25 U.S. Sunday newspapers, dropped by 3.2 percent to 7.2 percent for the period ending in September, over year ago figures.

The Washington Post fell 3.2 percent, while The New York Daily News dropped 7.2 percent." Newspapers have lost money or declared bankruptcy all together. Others have been laid off employees or turning their publications into online only publications like Seattle Post-Intelligencer. What is worse is that print circulation is expected to decline further for 2009 and 2010.

In America this also seems to be a problem since the readership of the younger population, according to the State of News Media, is already the lowest out of all age groups. The annual report also stated, "Among readers 18 to 24 years of age, 31 percent say they read a newspaper yesterday, according to data from Scarborough Research. This represents a drop of two percentage points from the prior year.

"Those in the 25-34 age group do not demonstrate much better numbers. Readership of daily newspapers was down to 32 percent, also down two percentage points from 2007." What newspapers in America are trying to do is to bring newspapers to the online front. For example, newspapers are creating pages on Twitter and Facebook.

This way people can become fans of the pages and get constant updates on the new, afterwards they can read the actual articles and the newspapers still get readership. Frank A. Bennack, Jr., the CEO of Hearst Corporation who is responsible for sixteen newspapers (including seattlepi.com), believes that the future is in online readership, for example through the use of the Amazon Kindle.

According to CNET News, online readership in the United States has increased 16 percent. "The New York Times posted a 6 percent increase in its December Internet traffic to 18.2 million unique visitors, compared with the same time a year ago."

Kazi Ayesha Ali, a finance major senior, says "It is a good idea to get young readers use to reading the paper again, but due to all the new technology we have with our phones we can get news updates for free.

Giving out free newspapers is a good idea also. I would go buy The New York Times after school if I was use to reading it for free and got used to their style of presenting news, but if not, I would just go with the next cheapest thing."

The future of print circulation still does not seem very dim. Even though newspapers are turning to online and online advertising for generating revenue, some are not fond of the idea of reading a paper online. Reading a paper copy of the newspaper still holds as a tradition for some part of the population and as long as that tradition is alive, so will be the newspaper industry.