While there is much hand-wringing over how to attract young readers, The Register-Herald in Beckley, W. Va., (28,694 Monday-Saturday, 30,071 Sunday) decided to take matters into its own hands by sponsoring a teen-written newspaper for local high school students.

The two-year-old Student Herald is widening its reach this year by appearing as an insert in the Register-Herald’s regular daily edition. In the past, the broadsheet relied on journalism classes to hand out 10,000 copies to each high school, but Chuck Jessup, advertising manager, thinks the new distribution will increase its popularity because now “parents can see it as well.”

“We’re trying to reach a younger audience, but how do you do that when your average reader is 50-plus years old?” Jessup says. “This gives us an opportunity to do that.”

The student-written paper comes out on a Thursday once a month while school is in session. Two students
from each of the 23 high schools in the region’s seven counties meet regularly with a reporter at the paper to plan the pages and work on stories. The paper also appears on the Register-Herald’s Web site, www.register-herald.com.

“Readership of newspapers keeps going down, so we need to get this generation familiar with the paper,” Jessup says.

The paper, typically eight pages in length, also provides an avenue for advertisers to directly reach a younger audience. The Student Herald averages advertising sales of $3,000 a month.

Responsibility for ad sales for the student paper is divided among The Register-Herald’s 12 sales representatives. Advertisers include music stores, colleges and entertainment businesses.

“There are a lot of anti-tobacco and drug-free billboard ads, too,” Jessup says. “It gives us a chance to get billboard advertising money into the paper.”

The decision to include the teen pages in the regular paper was prompted in part by pressure from advertisers concerned that all of the papers weren’t being circulated in the high schools, Jessup says.

The paper features a regular, man-on-the-street interview, with students posing questions to classmates, as well as stories on dating, sports and timely events, such as prom and homecoming –even the war in Iraq. There’s also a “Dear Ann and Andy” column that allows students to write in for advice.
Jessup says the paper wants to launch a teen competition to redesign the student paper’s masthead in the near future.

“The paper elicits good comments from the public,” he says. “We plan to keep it as long as it’s bringing in money.”

Contact: Chuck Jessup, (304) 255-4425; cjessup@register-herald.com.
(This article first appeared in NAA’s Big Ideas for Smaller-Market Newspapers.)

Picture Perfect

Idol Chatter in Lancaster

Almost 1,000 people attended the final concert of the first Lancaster Idol–put on by the Freestyle section of the Lancaster (Pa.) Intelligencer Journal– and were entertained by the talented 12 finalists. (More than 2,400 people voted online for these finalists.) And the winner was... DaNica Shirey from Red Lion, Pa. Freestyle received lots of exposure through ads and voting. Claudia Esbenshade, Freestyle editor, says that she is already laying the groundwork for next year.

For more information, contact her at cesbenshade@lnpnews.com or
(717) 291-2994.

And Another Thing

‘Your Mom’ Starts Online Life

A new section in the Quad-City Times in Davenport, Iowa, is winning over young readers with headlines like “Your Mom’s Got Issues” and “Your Mom Says Get a Job.”

How can such directives be popular? If the section is called “Your Mom,” that’s how. The online version of Your Mom (www.yourmomonline.com) came first in July, followed by a weekly “best of” print section.

“The future of this newspaper lies in attracting youthful Quad-Citians to begin a newspaper reading habit early,” says Michael Phelps, publisher of the Times. “Since nearly two-thirds of those between the ages of 18 and 24 say they read our newspaper sometime during the week, we’ve got a good start. But we need to do way better.”

He adds, “Your Mom is for those just younger than that group, our market’s high schoolers, and is not unlike its recently started cousins in Dallas and Chicago. But since most of the content will be written and photographed by our market’s students, I expect Your Mom will quickly evolve into ‘best of class’ status.”

Mary Junck, chairman and chief executive officer of Lee Enterprises, says Lee asked the Media Management Project class at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism to help research and create a way to reach more teen-agers. “The result is the work of a group of very talented graduate students,” she says. “They developed a creative and convincing plan that we very quickly set into motion.”

One of the graduate students, Hillary Rhodes, signed on as editor, immediately after receiving her master’s degree. She said the content will be “very, very localized .... People will see themselves in it, real live teens who really live here.”

So why is it called Your Mom?

“It’s a weird name, but that’s the beauty of it,” the Northwestern students said in their report. “Not only does the name conjure up memories of jokes we don’t like to admit we find funny, but Northwestern University’s Media Management Center also reports that today’s teens are very close with their parents, so the name works on at least two levels .... Like the jokes that inspired its name, Your Mom is irreverent and snarky.”

Rhodes says that the Your Mom site is averaging about 425 visitors a day and an average of 880 page views. And advertising is picking up as well for both online and print. The print version is distributed free at bright orange newspaper boxes in the area.

“Word is spreading,” says Rhodes. “I look at us as a Web site with an accompanying print product.”

And if Your Mom says it, it must be true.

For more information, contact Hillary Rhodes at hrhodes@qctimes.com.

World Fare

Indian, Australian Newspapers
Win World Young Reader Prize

The West Australian in Perth and The Telegraph in Calcutta, India, have been jointly awarded the 2004 World Young Reader Prize by the World Association of Newspapers.

In making the award to The West Australian, WAN says: “The West Australian offered schools a fun way to learn about the world that highlights the travel section, a part of the newspaper rarely used in newspaper in education programmes, and provided a cost-effective approach for the project that doubled sales to schools.” Lynne Cahill, a veteran of NIE Conferences in the U.S., is the NIE manager of the West Australian.

Her prize-winning Passport to the World project invites schools to use a story from the Thursday travel pages to complete an education workbook produced by the NIE department. The program allows students to read and analyze a variety of sections of the newspaper while giving teachers an interactive and fun program to fit in with the curriculum framework.

NIE has linked closely with Travel Editor Steven Scourfield, who works in advance to organize articles suited to the program.

“It brings the world and the newspaper to the classrooms, fulfilling the West’s social obligation of informing, educating and entertaining, too,” Scourfield says.

“The weekly travel story is highlighted with the passport dinkus, so it is easily identifiable to participating students without distracting the general readers,” says Cahill.

About The Telegraph, which received the award for a weekly supplement, WAN says: “The Telegraph in Schools, a separate weekly publication, does far more than give young people the opportunity to write about news of interest to them. The paper organizes an array of activities and clubs for the young and helped send a group of young people to Pakistan as ‘goodwill ambassadors’ who wrote about their experiences for the paper.”

The project involved students and teachers in 278 schools around Calcutta with an average student population of 800. This means a total student audience of more than two million was reached. The newspaper uses 600 “tiger” (ages 14-18) and “cub” reporters (ages 10-14). The program also supplies classroom materials and organizes club meetings, special events and workshop training.

Read more about WAN Young Reader Programs at
www.wan-press.org.

To the Letter

Teens Want Newspaper Stories
About Their Interests

By Connie Coyne

Several weeks ago, one of Utah’s high school journalism classes visited the Tribune office to observe the afternoon news huddle–where the stories for the next day’s front page and local front page are selected.

But the teens got here early, so I used the extra time to experiment on them.

First I threw copies of the previous week’s newspapers on the big square table and let them read them for about 20 minutes. I asked them to mark what they liked and what they did not like.

Be careful what you ask for. And be careful of making assumptions.

Many editors across the country assume that young people do not read newspapers. That assumption apparently is wrong. They read them, they talk about them, and they encourage friends to look when they find something interesting.

And, they are vocal about what they find and what they believe is missing:

“You need to have more stories that appeal to teens – like why kids have tattoos, extreme sports, downtown activities and what’s coming up in entertainment that we care about.”

“I like ‘For the Record’ (short courts and crime stories) because the heads grab you, the stories are short and to the point and there’s lots of information.”

“The front pages of the A section and local are exciting, but the middle pages of those sections look gray and I can’t find anything that grabs me.”

“Information graphics break up long stories and make them more interesting.”

“Reviews of concerts are too late to go to the concerts. You should send people to other cities to review the group before it comes to Salt Lake.”

“Referral lines to other stories should be cut into the type in the middle of stories, not at the end. If I get bored with the main story, I want to see what else you have to offer on the subject.”

“Why don’t you have a section for teens only with information about bands and video games and schools and sports?”

“A teen page could cover in depth issues that teens care about like jobs and school and careers.”

“The coverage of the war in Iraq is all about fighting and dying. It makes it seem like everyday life there is chaotic. There’s nothing about the views of most of the people. There’s nothing about Iraqi teens and what they think or how their lives are now.”

“So much coverage of Iraq means we are not getting coverage of other issues like the nukes in North Korea or what other countries have weapons of mass destruction.”

“You need more stories that tell readers if something is ‘out of their hands’ or if ‘they can make a difference.’”

“We never see anything about high schools and the arts–or high schools and other academic pursuits. It’s all about sports in high schools.”

“On some Sundays in the Opinion section, why not have the opinions of high school kids on school and the future and what’s important to us?”

They also admit, like most Americans, they like gossip about celebrities. “Come on, Bennifer was fun.”

They like photographs and they like graphics. They like shorter stories that are to the point. They also like stories that inspire and stories that “help you get a feel for what someone else’s life is like.”

They are not so different from the generations that came before them as far as newspapers are concerned. They know what they like; we do not always give it to them.

Connie Coyne is the Reader Advocate and NIE director for The Salt Lake (City) Tribune. She can be reached at (801) 257-8782 or reader.advocate@sltrib.com. This column first appeared in
The Salt Lake Tribune.

“It was a lot of hard work to pull together,” says Jennifer Dang NIE coordinator for The Honolulu Advertiser. She is speaking about her department’s newest tab,
“Eat a Rainbow.”

To produce the tab, Dang worked with Hawaii 5-a-Day Coalition, a local health organization. They provided the copy, and the data came from the State Department of Health, and the activities came from a variety of Web sites and Department of Education materials.

“I did a lot of researching and conceptualizing,” says Dang. “I felt that the information needed to be put together in a logical format, and be teacher and student friendly.”

The tab was actually not a goal in itself, but rather the public relations tool to promote the healthy fundraising coupon book which was a 5-a-day Coalition goal.

“NIE people always see opportunity to use the newspaper to educate and also try to make a little money for our program,” Dang says.

The sponsors were Jamba Juice, Dole Foods, a private school for Native Hawaiians and a local bank.

“My Dole contact was extremely pleased, so this may be a good time for other NIE programs to jump on the health bandwagon,” Dang says.

She distributed the tab full run with 30,000 overruns to distribute to teachers who may not receive the daily paper. The feedback from teachers and parents have been extremely rewarding, she says.

For further information, contact Jennifer Dang at (808) 525-7660 or jdang@honolulu.gannett.