Student journalists highlight Gen Z voices

As young people turn away from the news, student journalists are trying to bring Gen Z voices to the fore 

Recent research from Benjamin Toff has found that younger Americans, particularly working class, non-college educated women, are more likely to avoid the news. Toff, a professor at the University of Minnesota, says that people who say they avoid the news are often thinking of partisan cable news or sensationalist local news when they are asked about “the media”, and they feel that these outlets don’t reflect their views, he told Eduardo Suárez at The Reuters Institute. 

But ahead of the election, student journalists across the country are trying to tell the stories of Gen Zers. Loyola Marymount University has sent 20 journalists to swing states to cover issues like gun violence, immigration and the Middle East. And The Daily Lobo at the University of New Mexico worked with other newsrooms to send out an audience survey, and were surprised by the diversity of issues that students said they cared about. But Chatwan Mongkol at The Nutgraf writes that student journalists face barriers to access and struggle with mental health challenges. 

News In Focus 
Headlines, resources and events aligned with API’s four areas of focus.

Civic Discourse & Democracy

>> Trump ratchets up threats on the media (The New York Times) 

Former President Trump has begun talking more about stripping broadcast media outlets of their broadcast licenses over coverage he doesn’t like. The FCC, which is appointed by the president, can strip licenses from local affiliates of major networks. 

• Dig Deeper: If Donald Trump returns to the White House, the Espionage Act offers a clear path for him to stifle press freedom. (Columbia Journalism Review) 

>> Don’t trust the polls? Neither did The New York Times in 1956. Spoiler: it didn’t work out great (The Conversation) 

The Times’s coverage in 1956 concluded that President Eisenhower wouldn’t match his overwhelming victory in 1952; in reality, we far surpassed it. W. Joseph Campbell suggests that while polls can be flawed, shoe-leather reporting cannot replace it in election predictions. 

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Culture & Inclusion

>> Behind The Asterisk: How reader feedback supports our product work (The 19th*)

Andrea Atehortua, product operations manager at The 19th, says that her team uses constant audience feedback to ensure that their new products meet the needs of users. She says that this input impacts the journalism, partnerships and marketing of the site. 

>> 10 steps to sanity from Good Conflict: Try this language to make hard conversations easier (Good Conflict)

The more you approach tough conversations with openness, curiosity and a willingness to listen, the better you’ll get at having those discussions. Here are some sentence starters to open a discussion with curiosity rather than certainty.

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Community Engagement & Trust

>> Who’s mailing the Catholic Tribune? It’s not the church, it’s partisan media. (ProPublica)

Catholic dioceses around the country have told parishioners that newspapers appearing at their home under the name Catholic Tribune are not affiliated with the church, but instead are pro-Trump media focusing on issues that they hope will resonate with conservative Catholics. They have been traced to pink slime network Metric Media. 

>> In Melrose, an experiment in hyper-local AI podcasting (Commonwealth Beacon) 

A local broadcaster in a Boston suburb has created a “robocast” of AI-generated voices discussing hyperlocal issues like local zoning. He sees the podcast, created by dropping public documents into Google’s NotebookLM, as an experiment for a news desert. 

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Revenue & Resilience

>> The fall of free newspapers in Europe: Is it the end? (The Fix)

Following the pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which increased paper and ink costs, free newspapers in Europe are disappearing. They are also struggling to attract advertisers who prefer the more targeted ads that digital media allows. 

>> The key decisions that saved the Boston Globe (Press Gazette)

After nearly closing following the 2009 financial crisis, The Boston Globe has thrived by separating the free, lifestyle-focused Boston.com from the paywalled news content of BostonGlobe.com. A trial offer of six months of content for $1 also converted many subscribers. 

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What else you need to know

👋 Olivia Nuzzi and New York Magazine part ways (New York Magazine)

🤖 OpenAI, Microsoft fund $10M Lenfest Institute AI local news project (Axios) 

🗳️ Los Angeles Times won’t endorse for president (Semafor) 

🪧 NewsGuild files unfair labor practice charge against NYT (Axios) 

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