BRITISH JOURNALISM NEEDS REINVENTION

The RTS and Press Gazette nominated NEED TO KNOW team on why the UK news is failing to engage young audiences

If you were young you’d already be bored, and if you are young then we’re sorry. This article’s headline is true but, unless you’re already invested, it’s pretty uninteresting and that’s the problem.

See, the way young audiences consume content has changed but journalism hasn’t, and that’s creating serious issues for our society. Ofcom’s 2020 News Consumption in the UK report found over 40% of young people believe TV news is ‘too boring’ and ‘not relevant’. The Government’s 2019 Cairncross Review said it’s critical that new efforts are made to engage young audiences in journalism, ‘the health of our democracy depends on it’.

To be clear, it’s not that UK news providers haven’t tried to reach young audiences — BBC News, ITN, and Sky all have plenty of presence on social media — it’s that when they do they (sorry guys) just do a really bad job at it. We could provide a litany of specific critiques, but we don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, so we’ve broadened it to three big issues:

TONE

The tone of British news has barely changed since the days of Alexandra Palace. Sure, maybe they now stand instead of sit and edgily pop the top button on their shirts but, for the most part, it’s the same austerely patronising delivery it’s always been. Oxford University’s 2019 study ‘How Young People Consume News’ found young people don’t want the news to be what you ‘should’ know but what’s ‘useful, interesting, and fun’ to know. News providers need to shake off the superiority and find ways to speak to young people without preaching; yes that means humor, no it doesn’t mean crowbarring acronyms like AF into your broadcasts because that just feels, well, thirsty.

FORM

Like we said, UK news does try to reach young audiences, putting their reports on TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram etc, but it’s the ‘putting’ that’s the problem. Most of the time when a news broadcaster puts content on social media it’s just exactly what they just put on TV with, at best, a dodgy 9:16 crop and a yoof voice over. Research shows the average attention span on social media is five seconds, roughly the time it takes for traditional TV journalists to clear their throats. Broadcasters need to forget replication and build a whole new grammar of highly-concentrated storytelling, using everything from cartoon graphics to splitscreens, if they really want to succeed on social.

ACTIVE

And it’s got to be woke, right? Wrong. The big mistake many news organisations make is to bundle woke and activism together: this isn’t about bleeding hearts but active minds. At its worst, woke culture is just as preachy as the news broadcasts young people avoid. On the other hand, studies show young people want the news to explain how they can personally make a difference. Ofcom’s 2019 ‘Review of BBC News’ found young people want the news to help them engage with the world — but it isn’t!

Ok, sure, you’re thinking, it’s easy to type all of that into Medium, but can you put your money where you mouse is and prove there’s a better, next generation, journalism? Yup! In 2019 we invested our own cash to found NEED TO KNOW, creating the UK’s first news publisher designed exclusively for young audiences and the social media platforms where they spend their time. We’re a young and diverse team dedicated to rigorous, non-partisan journalism — proud to be the first digital news provider to adhere to the Ofcom broadcasting code (even though we don’t have to!)

Launching during 2019’s General Election campaign we had immediate success, with a million engaged viewers a week, 80% of them under the age of 25. We were nominated for a Press Gazette Award for Innovation and this month we’re one of three finalists for an RTS Journalism Award — it’s BBC News (100 years old), CNN (40 years old), and us (two weeks old before our nominated bulletin!)

So, watch a flavor of our stuff below, check out our website, follow our rules, and join us in saving British society, one splitscreen at a time!

Seth Goolnik and Warren Nettleford are the co-founders of NEED TO KNOW