Aslak Gottlieb, a Danish journalism educator, researcher, author and media project developer has spent years focused on the elements needed to make news and news products more relevant for young people.
Later this month, on the eve of the World News Media Congress in Copenhagen, Gottlieb will ask Gen Zeers to come up with a contemporary set of news values that publishers can use when developing news products to ensure youth appeal.
This will be achieved through a collaborative workshop with editors.
The news values will build on a set of Engagement Criteria Gottlieb developed in 2017 for the media sector to “produce journalistic news to engage young media users, teens and young adults.”
“The engagement criteria were intended as an add-on to traditional news criteria, or news values. They can be used for the education and supplemental training of journalists who want to connect with a younger target audience. And they can be used as an editorial tool for a range of platforms, formats and genres,” explains Gottlieb.
The transformative Global Youth News Lab will comprise 110 young media users from around the world, teaming up with global editors and newsroom leaders, to explore and define the news values that matter most to them. The result will be a new standard and guidelines for outlets building news products to target young audiences.
“Young people want to keep up with current events, but they feel excluded by traditional media. They are major users of social media and streaming services, a factor that causes the schism, which is the premise of my fellowship: Never have there been so many media channels for young people; yet, only a few journalistic news media produce content for this target group.”
The workshop will be held at a traditional Danish Folk high school, International People’s College in Elsinore, Denmark on Sunday, 26 May.
Attendance is free, but limited to registered Congress-goers, who can apply here.
The resulting Global Youth News Values list will be presented at the World Editors Forum during the World News Media Congress on 29 May in Copenhagen. They will be further discussed and developed in the coming years as part of the Congress legacy program with the working title The Copenhagen Criteria as a tool for publishers when they develop news products for young audiences.
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