This article was interesting because I have four children. The only time I see them reading a newspaper is the Sunday comics or the sports section for scores. The news section containing information about our country, economy and politics and local interest stories never get wrinkled.
A report “Young People and News” conducted by Harvard Professor, Thomas Patterson, surveyed three age groups, 31 and older, 18 to 30 and 12 to 17. He found that over 25% of teenagers and 24% of young adults paid almost no attention to news, whatever the source (newspaper, television, radio or internet).
Well maybe print news is for us old timers. About half of the young adults say they actively seek out news from the internet as well as a third of the teenagers. The concern is that even those who read newspapers or those that get their news from electronic sources tend to be superficial in their news consumption. They graze rather than chew. When asked to recall information about a recent hard news story, not many could give in depth information – just that they were aware of the story.
Young people today when asked “Where did you learn of a particular news story”, 28 % of the teenagers said they heard it second hand – they heard it from a friend rather than learning about it from a news outlet.
Is it time the media looked closer at how they are distributing the news? Should it be required in schools to learn to read newspapers, either electronically or print? Have we taught our younger generation that news sources are unreliable? Have we oversaturated the young with 24 hour news programs that they no longer sit and absorb any story at length?
Where has Walter Cronkite gone? Do any of you know who Walter Cronkite is? The media needs to figure out the best way to inform our younger generation. Information is knowledge.
Academic Search Premier, Terry Jones, St Louis Journalism Review; Sep2007, Vol. 37 Issue 299, p10
4 comments:
The reason that young adults pay no attention to news from newspaper is because they get that info from the Internet more often now. Sometimes young adults drop their real-life friends and activities and spend all their time online. Moreover, sometimes the TV news or newspapers are loaded with advertising programs that might become irritating for young adults.
S. S.
I believe that we should have kids read the newspaper in school. They should at least have to summarize one article per week about a world news story. That would get them in the habit of reading about the news and paying more attention to what is going on in the world.
I feel that kids are overwhelmed with alot of information as it is. The newspaper and television/internet news is just too depressing for our young children to be reading. I believe that once you become an adult, around 18 and live out on your own, this is the time to be paying attention to the news unless of course it is something that directly affects your life. With our children today, times have changed, they find all of their information over the internet, but they are still reading it.
I think that once the newspapers and the news start posting news that is worth reading and watching that people will start reading and watching them again not just the ones that are so use to doing it on a regular basis that it is normal and they do it out off habit. I cannot remember the last time I picked up a paper and read it all the way thru or watched the news on TV.
I pull all my news online so I can get the news I want and skip the rest. If I go online and I do not see anything worth reading I do something else. Most of these newscasts are only worried about what will make people watch or read no0t the real news and so it is biased towards what will make a juicy or shocking story and so all they have to say is negative things.
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