How Gen Z are turning off to news to protect their mental health PLUS

September 16, 2022

Alas, it only seems like yesterday when journalism and media executives were focused on attracting to Millennials, and now they are quickly pivoting to the next generation, Gen Z or Zoomers, which I was zero days old on Wednesday when I first heard this term for them. Building on the stories earlier this week, Journalism.co.uk's Jacob Granger speaks with Ethan El-Katatney about the challenges of reaching Zoomers. They are avoiding news more because of rampant disinformation and also to protect their own mental health.

We've got a good roundup of excellent coverage about the newsletter business. There are more warning signs for the media economy including in the podcasting and gaming media space. And Brian Morrissey has a great weekend read about the distortions that financialisation has brought to media companies. I'm off on Monday due to the bank holiday here in the UK. I'll see you next week, and if you're in London at the Press Gazette's Future of Media Technology conference, I'll see you there.

With incessant and monumentous news events, Gen Z is increasingly finding it all too easy to switch off from mainstream news coverage... how to cater for an audience who needs you more than evert

Again, some interesting insights here into the media habits of Gen Z. The thing that stands out most to me is how easily they will filter out media that they find inauthentic or even purposefully dishonest. Give the podcast a listen to find out strategies to connect with them from Bloomberg's Ethar El-Katatney.

Washington’s most influential media C.E.O. recalls some lessons from the Politico era—and offers some advice for Punchbowl and Semafor.

Jim VandeHei has built not one but two digital media brands - Politico and now Axios. One thing that really stands out is how he built not only his brands but also his staff. One caveat here: What works in DC doesn't necessarily translate outside of DC.

With advertising down and newsprint and delivery costs rising, reduced traffic puts pressure on an already ailing industry.

Well, this is not cheery reading. Higher newsprint prices and softness in ads due to recessionary pressures are combining with a drop in local news website traffic to compound the challenges that local news providers are facing. But this might not be as bad as it seems on its face. They might be losing value, unknown, anonymous traffic rather than paying subscribers.

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The Press Gazette offers up some great insights into why newsletters have become such a powerful media platform. "In an industry that has seen advertising revenues swallowed up by tech platforms and traffic at the mercy of social media algorithms, owning the audience relationship is valuable."

I still remember more than a decade ago when Clay Shirky was asked what the next killer app was, and he responded, "Email because it is ubiquitous." If you earn a spot in someone's inbox, that is a hugely valuable relationship.

The Press Gazette offers up some great insights into why newsletters have become such a powerful media platform. "

Recently, the publishers seeing notable success with newsletters are those who have started to carve out their own unique tone of voice Many publishers have historically kept email newsletters strictly professional. There has always been an expectation that communications coming from an organisation should be business-like and serious. But recently, the publishers seeing notable success …

And WNIP has some great advice on how to establish that relationship.

Job cuts in formerly buzzy parts of media

Acast is moving up the date by which the company aims to turn profitable, and to achieve that it has announced it will cut its current workforce by 15% or

Has podcasting peaked? Or is this just a sign that tech investment has peaked and that companies are trying to stretch the capital that they have so that they can retain as much ownership as possible while they get to break even and beyond?

The Fanbyte layoffs today follow previous layoffs at G4TV and Future earlier this week

This is another canary in the coal mine - softness in gaming. What is really interesting here is to see China's Tencent cutting back. But for anyone (like me) who keeps a close eye on the Chinese economy, things are getting really dicey there with COVID lockdowns and a growing real estate crisis.

Weekend Reading: Former Digiday EIC on how financialisation has hurt media companies

The future is made, not financially engineered

The formulation that 'bean counters' killed newspapers and once great media companies has been a constant refrain amongst journalists for a long time. While I firmly am of the camp that you can't cut your way to growth, you have to develop a news and information or entertainment product for your audience now; I think that blaming accountants is too simplistic. Brian Morrissey, the former editor-in-chief of Digiday has a more nuanced and more accurate view that this is not about accounting but rather financialisation. Having someone run your books well is a godsend. But when casino capitalism reduces your value to a poker chip on a spread bet, that is when things get really ugly. Financialisation is growing the wealth for the few and destroying the value of so many things in our economy. Houses used to be places where we lived, and now they are just CDOs - financial instruments to be traded that can easily become detached from market fundamentals like the ability of most of us to afford them.