Reaching younger audiences has long been a challenge for media organizations. As platforms evolve, trust in news shifts and news avoidance grows, it can feel especially difficult to connect with and serve multigenerational audiences in an authentic and sustainable way.
How can news leaders do their part to represent and include community perspectives from members of different age groups? The answers matter to democracy, and to the personal and collective challenges we face — those arising from loneliness and the lack of social connection brought about by the pandemic.
We heard many ways newsrooms are thinking about intergenerational problem-solving at our recent API Local News Summit on Civic Discourse Across Generations. We gathered news leaders in Denver who spoke with one another about collaborations with students they’ve spearheaded, ways their coverage both looks back and paves the way forward and how these efforts can strengthen civic engagement.
One theme that emerged was that experiments and targeted efforts to reach younger generations can be helpful as proof-of-concept, but making systemic changes — while necessary to be sustainable — can feel overwhelming.
That’s what publisher and CEO Vandana Kumar encountered when she took stock of India Currents, a publication founded almost 40 years ago to serve first-generation Indian audiences in the U.S. The children of those early readers — the so-called “1.5 generation” and second-gen Indian Americans — aren’t flipping through print magazines or even browsing static websites. They’re forming their identities through fast, visual and deeply personal media.
Their challenge was clear: India Currents could not thrive unless it bridged a 30-plus year-old magazine to 30-plus year-old next-gens in the diaspora. They began a transformation that wasn’t just about digital transition; it was about fostering a vibrant, cross-generational community that speaks in many voices, formats and languages — literal and cultural.
Kumar wrote for API about the concrete steps India Currents took to make the transformation that would prioritize generational solidarity. Below are some of the frameworks she used, which she learned about in the Media Transformation Challenge at the Poynter Institute. You can find her full essay here.
Share with your network
- Connect across generations
- Three frameworks to serve younger audiences
- Use history as a rallying point
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The American Press Institute is hosting a local summit on October 9-10 in Washington, D.C., to empower news leaders in enhancing residents’ leadership and influence over their community’s information ecosystem.
