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Entity reports on the number of millennials reading newspapers in modern American society.

Are millennial women and men reading newspapers in today’s modern culture?

Of course not. Or at least not the way their grandparents used to.

It’s no secret that the Old Gray Lady is not a hit with the younger generation. Millennials, when they follow current events at all, often read the news about the world on their phones – sprinkled in with a healthy dose of entertaining cat GIFs and videos of celebrities lip-syncing to pop songs.

But though this changing media atmosphere is transforming newspapers into a niche business for an aging population, new business models and a renewed focus on local issues could establish the print newspaper industry as an enduring pillar in the backdrop of the increasingly diverse and colorful, but not always hard-hitting popular media.

Studies have shown that the audience for traditional newspapers is dwindling. A dismal 16 percent of young women and men ages 18 to 24 read a daily newspaper, the Pew Research Center reports. Readership rises in the 24 to 34 bracket, though – all the way to 17 percent.

But that doesn’t mean millennials aren’t paying attention to the news; though they don’t often follow a single publication, they read a mix of hard news, fictional and satirical pieces, lifestyle tips and plenty of puppy videos.

This eclectic and diverse mix of news can only be found in the strange world of self- and peer-curation called social media. The average millennials’ “news outlets” are often the news feeds of Facebook, Twitter and other social media websites. A 2015 Media Insight survey found that 88 percent of women and men ages 18 to 34 regularly read news links from Facebook and 86 percent report that this news comes from a “variety of viewpoints.”

Unfortunately, this self-selected style of news consumption is not encouraging for traditional news outlets. Though many newspapers have online versions of their paper, the numbers for these publications show that journalism has not made the shift from print to digital. Statistics show that 55 percent of newspaper consumers read the print version compared to 11 percent who read a combination of desktop and print and 14 percent who read on desktop, print and mobile.

This indicates that newspaper readership may not be going mobile – readers may be getting news from entirely other outlets such as television, social media and radio.

This leaves print newspaper businesses scrambling not only for viewers, but also for money. Almost a quarter of newspapers’ revenues comes from digital advertising, but according to the Pew Research report, “this has more to do with the decline of print revenue than the growth of digital.” And social media advertising is much more lucrative than newspaper advertising.

So what can newspapers do to gain the loyalty of their widely – if eclectically – read young readers?

Some journalists suggest that traditional journalism is here to stay, but as a niche business. Long-form magazine pieces, investigative journalism and perspective journalism pieces (like those from the edgy but fascinating Vice), are a luxury to their loyal readers and a competitive but rewarding outlets for talented writers. So newspapers could see opportunities to explore more creative news coverage to attract readers.

For now, though, online news operates largely under the “piggyback model.” Bloggers, YouTubers and low-content aggregators benefit from the “Google, paraphrase and publish” strategy.

That leaves ever-shrinking staffs of traditional news outlets doing the essential – but grueling – grunt work of  reporting breaking news while secondary news sources piggyback off a few strung-out, overworked reporters. (Although if you asked a few of them, they’d probably grin sardonically and say, “What else is new?”)

“The model I think for most newsrooms has to be to think about both [print and digital journalism] instinctively,” said Tony Gallagher, editor of the British newspaper The Sun, in an interview with Business Insider. “Although we have all these new brands arriving, the reliance on traditional media is as important as ever. And I think it’s beyond dispute that newspapers continue to drive the national conversation.”

The future of the newspaper business isn’t laid out in black and white. But as the media diversifies, newspapers need to find a way to be the backbone of a colorful structure that will collapse without the hard news that traditional New York Times reporting provides.

Edited by Ellena Kilgallon
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