This year’s Youth Culture Uncovered looked at things through the world of news. The Reuters Digital News Report in 2023 highlighted the rise in young people avoiding news, alongside a lower sense of value placed in public service broadcasting relative to older cohorts. Key takeaways:

  • The news as a product is broken – not young people. Young people are not ‘not interested’ in the news per se, but they have to work hard to navigate news in a world of information overload. The news needs to reinvent itself to be relevant to young people – considering factors such as topic relevance, format type (embracing cues of infotainment), and a storytelling approach that delivers solutions and clear call to actions.
  • Young people may not trust the media as an ‘establishment’, but they do trust independent voices of reliable news – individual journalists and content creators who they share an affinity with and a shared sense of lived experiences. Being a legacy news brand with a strong reputation isn’t enough.
  • The best news storytelling comes firstly from a place of listening and knowing what people care about, and then presenting a point of view in language that is easy to understand and in formats that are information dense yet entertaining, inviting further conversation.