Image credit: dyobmit via Flickr

Among Millennials there has been a lot of talk about the future of newspapers and journalism in general. Frankly, the decline of print media is frightening. With the introduction and explosion of social media it is so easy to disregard traditional journalism in favor of the citizen-journalism structure.

However, there seems to be one news outlet that completely understands the trends in journalism today and embraces them and uses them to their advantage: CNN, the first 24-hour news network that in its infancy was jokingly referred to as the “Chicken Noodle Network”. Today, it has become a power house of news attracting journalism’s most coveted audience – Gen Y.

CNN has embraced social media, mainly in the form of Twitter, to target Gen Y and give the fast, reliable news that we as a generation crave. While writing this article I created two Twitter searches. One was for CNN and the other for Fox News. The amount of tweets related to CNN were much greater and happening at a faster pace. Clearly, this is the news sources for Twitter users.

Not only that, but CNN branches out into many different Twitter handles to satisfy niches. There is the classic and omnipresent @CNN which has over 816,000 followers. Then there is @cnnbrk for breaking news and @cnni for international news. That is barely scratching the surface. Don’t forget about @HLNTV (or Headline News), another branch of CNN and all of their reporters and anchors like @wolfblitzercnn, @AndersonCooper and @AmanpourCNN. There are so many ways to communicate with the CNN brand on Twitter it’s sort of crazy. Each outlet provides different content and cross-promotes with other CNN-related Twitter users.

Other than utilizing Twitter, CNN has been facilitating citizen journalism with CNN’s iReport. If you have ever watched a newscast on CNN or even HLN, you know that they feature pictures and video from iReporters all across the globe. This way, if a CNN affiliate can’t actually be at the site of a breaking news story, someone will. It’s remarkable. Most news networks mock and laugh at non-journalists reporting news. CNN is fostering the growth of this remarkable trend in journalism today.

Pete Cashmore, CEO of Mashable also recently has begun as a weekly columnist for CNN. His column is all about technology and social networking. This clearly shows that CNN is taking new media seriously and utilizing non-journalists in another fashion.

CNN also underwent a redesign. The main is the inclusion of video. They also split up their site into three main sections: Home, Video and NewsPulse (still in its beta version). Their main goal is to integrate more multi-media on the site. With NewsPulse you can customize the news to exactly what you want to see. If you want to see more videos, read more technology-related news, NewsPulse makes it possible. CNN is making the traditional experience of reading the news much more personal and media-oriented.

CNN has always been a front-runner in terms of news networks. Now, they’re number 3 on the list of Virtue’s Top 100 Social Brands for 2009. They know exactly who is important to target and how to get to them. Gen Y is the future of news consumption. We want everything fast and efficient. CNN is giving us exactly what we want and they embrace new trends. Not only is CNN meant for Millennials, it’s meant for all news consumers.

Think of us like you would a C-suite. Not because we’re rich (yet). Not because we run the world (or do we?). Not because we’re entitled (we’re just smarter).

Because we’re busy as hell.

So, how do we keep ourselves so informed and so immersed in brands and culture and current events? Between classes or our entry-level 9-to-5, extra- and intra-curriculars and all that other stuff we’re knee-deep in, we don’t have time to sit down with a nice cup of coffee and the day’s Times – well, not all of us. Just refer to our recent question – would we ever pay for a paper? Mmm nope.

Now let’s touch upon how you can leverage digital social media to get your content to us. Shitting your pants? Don’t. This can be another conversation for another time.

In the mean-time, here are some simpler, easier, older digital mediums where you can reach us:

Email:

A relatively old medium, but we all have it. Check out the AAAA Smartbrief and MediaPost (yeah, I’m in advertising). The Google Alerts model is great too. Quick headlines, brief descriptions, and tons of great content.

RSS:

We all know what it is, and, as we quickly adopt dashboards and plug into more and more feeds, it’s a good way to throw out some interesting toplines and get it front-and-center on our homepages. Check out PwC’s 10Minutes. I’ve got 10 minutes.

Mobile:

Texting might be overkill, but consider moving toward mobile pages and apps. Smartphone penetration is still low amongst the college crowd (18-24) at 5%, according to eMarketer, but smartphones are expected to become mainstream mobile by 2013 – shouldn’t you be forward thinking? Forbes? WSJ? CNN? There’s an app for that.

Your site:

The 18-24 year demo is near the top (just 10 minutes shy of our parents) when it comes to minutes spent per day on the web. Push out your content, and do it hard. But make sure that it’s user-friendly, bite-size and buzz-worthy. “Exclusive” is no longer the word. We want to get it everywhere. A good site is the Daily Beast – check out their Cheat Sheet and Buzz Board.

It’s all about finding Gen Y, because, let’s face it; we don’t have time to come to you. Like the C-suite, we’re not going to actively engage ourselves. We’re too busy. But we want to be engaged on our time and in our medium.

Photo Credit: 34592360@N02

Newspapers

This week’s question is from photographer Mark Harmel, a 55-year-old Los Angeles-based photographer. In a recent encounter with a pre-med student in LA, the future doctor told Mark he had never once in his life bought an actual newspaper. Why would he? The content is free online. So this week’s question is, “would you ever pay for a newspaper?”  Please leave your answer with any amount of elaboration, in the comment section.

Would you ever pay for a newspaper?

Photo by: theerin