Youth vs Old Media
It’s a different world!
(UK/WORLD) Check out this absolute peach of a speech delivered by John Naughton to the Society of Editors conference..
It’s nothing short than head-noddingly-right and offers a scathing challenge to the newspapers regarding their niaive view the youth demographic.
There are more take-aways than a Friday night out across the UK—here are my picks:
…in any other industry, the discovery that your potential future customers weren’t interested in buying your product would prompt an investigation into whether there was something wrong with the product. But what one hears – still – from the newspaper industry is that there’s something wrong with the customers. And what one finds, on closer examination, is that the industry seems determined either to insult or to ignore them.
These kids have been socially conditioned in a universe that runs parallel to the one inhabited by most folks in the media business. They’ve been playing computer games of mind-blowing complexity forever. They’re resourceful, knowledgeable and natural users of computer and communications technology. They’re Digital Natives – accustomed to creating content of their own – and publishing it.
These are the future, my friends. They’re here and living among us. They’re not very interested in us, and I’m not sure I blame them. The best we can hope for is that one day they may keep us as pets.
How can a guy who wears a tie be so ‘down’?
