This counts as two posts..... there are two articles.

I found two articles that I think are worth taking a look at. The first article is entitled Young Adults Are Giving Newspapers Scant Notice (7/17/07). This article basically confirms what we already know, but it mentioned two concepts that are worth considering in determing our product. The first is that young people do not make an appointment with the news every day, and therefore do not have an ingrained news habit. The second is that the article suggests that we have in general become more of a viewing nation than a reading nation. Perhaps the way to capture our audience would then be to create an online product that gears 65% of its resources toward viewing the news and 35% toward reading it.

The second article entitled, entitled A Portrait of Generation Next (1/9/07), provides some well-developed research on how much and how young people engage political issues. The article's main focus is on Generation Nexters, or young adults between 18 and 25 years of age. Some of the findings from the research include:

• When asked how Generation Nexters watch/listen to the news, 64% said they check in on it from time to time compared to 34% who watch it regularly. 55% follow the national news only when something important is happening, and 73% follow international news only when something important is happening.
• Of all the news venues mentioned, the only area where young people surpass their older counterparts in terms of news consumption is in online news.
• Young people consume less local news and network television news thatn do older generations, that gap is smaller on cable news channels such as CNN, MSNBC or Fox news.
• 13% of Generation Nexters reported watching the Daily Show with John Stewart regularly, compared with 6% of the general public.
• Generation Nexters tend to have more positive views of government, and are more pro-government than older age groups on several dimensions.

The article addresses how young people engage other issues such as government, the environment, immigration, social security, business, war and peace, etc. The article could prove very helpful in determining priorities of focus for our product.

Overall, I feel that the second article could help us select the demographic with the most potential.