Listen up, editors, publishers and news media producers: either you cater to Generation Z and Millennials, or you’re history before you can say “Johnny Appleseed.”
That message came across loud and clear at the Global Editors Network (GEN) summit this month where two young speakers in a pre-closing session told a gathering of the world’s media heavyweights, very politely, to shape up, or shut up.
Generation Z tells it like it is (Abu-Fadil)
It was pure genius inviting students Georgina McMillan from San Francisco and Callum Bryson from London to speak for themselves and not have “experts” pontificating about what young people like, how they consume their news and content, and countless other details about today’s ever-changing media environment.
According to Bryson, engaging Generation Z means: Reporting on important stories pertaining to world news or politics using facts over opinions; when describing concepts, illustrating them to make them relatable; ensuring that headlines and articles match in tone; and not using clickbait in headlines.
GEN Summit 2017 booklet (Abu-Fadil)
“To truly engage my generation, get involved with them on social media, in their schools, etc.,” he concluded at the event dubbed “From Post-Truth to Virtual Reality: Navigating Media’s Future,” adding that he doesn’t read any news in print.
McMillan said she often buys magazines ranging from The Economist to Vanity Fair in airports while traveling but that most of her news intake is online.
“We've grown up with the internet as our backyard,” she said of Generation Z’s interest in current affairs while debunking reports of her age group’s detachment. “My generation cares deeply about issues and human rights.”
It was refreshing to get the youth’s perspective at this rich Vienna conference. It should be repeated next year but much earlier in the event.
GEN’s seventh summit grouped luminaries from CNN, The Washington Post, Google, Facebook, Twitter, the Financial Times, ESPN, News Republic, Buzzfeed, and Storyful, to name a few, as well as academics, related industry firms, and futurists.
Two-and-a-half days loaded with sessions, panels, master classes and workshops were a feast for media aficionados and require other blogposts that I’ll write later.
NewsWhip’s Josh Donnelly (Abu-Fadil)
The conference took off with a networking welcome brunch during which I got a demonstration on data-driven storytelling from NewsWhip’s account strategist Josh Donnelly.
NewsWhip, used by media giants the BBC, The Washington Post, Google and Time, says it detects millions of stories as they’re published from over 150 countries and 65 languages.
“Our patented technology then compares those stories against all social networks, to see the changing rate at which they collect social interactions,” its promotional brochure says. “This gives you a clear signal of what’s performing, and lets you predict what will drive engagement today.”
Viva analytics!
Organizers asked the 750+ participants in an opening session who among them had experienced 360, who had experience in virtual reality (VR), who had produced either, and if anyone was producing augmented reality (AR) and/or mixed reality (MR).
VR is here to stay (Abu-Fadil)
“If I can tell a story like no one can, VR is valid,” opined Francesca Panetta, executive editor for VR at Guardian News and Media.
She said The Guardian does a hard amount of journalism for each piece, and that although her organization experiments, it also looks for technology, philanthropic and commercial partnerships to monetize apps.
Her panel was an affirmation that VR is here to stay and led in to the next session on mixed reality, machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) for journalists - an inescapable reality today – with an emphasis on mixed reality as the new wave of storytelling.
Mixed reality demonstration (Abu-Fadil)
The first half-day’s events included two master classes, on the future of editorial analytics and visual storytelling on Facebook, respectively, as well as a presentation on GEN building the DJ Hub, a global platform for digital journalism.
Robots got their fair share at the summit but experts admitted that automated translation still has drawbacks and that linguistic nuances often fall through the bot cracks.
Francesco Marconi, the Associated Press’ (AP) strategy manager and automation co-lead, was quick to point out that technology is not the story, but that the story is journalism.
AP's coverage of 2016 Olympics (Abu-Fadil)
“AI is just one of many tools that journalists can leverage to dig more insights, find new data and discover new perspectives,” he said.
At the 2016 Summer Olympics, the AP used a team of 11 robotic and 16 remote cameras that allowed photographers to place cameras in physically inaccessible areas as well as rapidly adjust to preset filming functions, he said of one example of the agency’s work.
Lucy Kueng, senior research fellow at the Reuters Institute at Oxford University, presented the findings of the institute’s “Digital News Report 2017.”
Reuters Institute’s “Digital News Report 2017” (Abu-Fadil)
Some of the key takeways are:
Ø Growth in social media for news is flattening out in some markets, as messaging apps that are (a) more private and (b) tend not to filter content algorithmically are becoming more popular.
Ø Only a quarter (24%) of respondents think social media do a good job in separating fact from fiction, compared to 40% for news media.
Ø There are wide variations in trust across the 36 surveyed countries.
Ø In most countries, there’s a strong connection between distrust in the media and perceived political bias.
Ø Almost a third of the sampled respondents said they often or sometimes avoided the news.
Ø Mobile marches on, outstripping computer access for news in an increasing number of countries.
The entire study can be downloaded here.