Millennial Voices on the News

On Thursday Nov. 11, Journalism professor Paula Poindexter invited scholars, journalists, and Millennials to speak at the “Millennials and News Summit.” The Summit is a part of her Journalism, Society, and the Citizen Journalist class which she developed for the Carnegie Corporation of New York Initiative on the Future of Journalism Education. The guests convened to discuss the repercussions of the Millennial generation not consuming the news.

Millennials are the generation born between the early '80s and '90s. They are characterized as digital natives who are constantly connected and ready to consume information day and night.

In attendance to represent the Millennial generation were six students from Poindexter’s “Jounalism, Society, and the Citizen Journalist” class. The students, nominated by their peers, were Jena Cuellar, 
Thu Pham
, James Whitely, 
Ashley Jennings
, Doug Luippold, and Andrew Moore.

Poindexter sparked the discussion by asking the student panel, “What is the media doing right?” Most of the students agreed that the media has done well to make news accessible through a variety of mediums. Panel member, Pham, said that the news has involved themselves in social networks such as Facebook and Twitter which has grabbed the attention of Millennials.

There was a positive and negative feedback from the scholars and journalists in the audience. Peter Levine, director of The Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning & Engagement at Tufts University was not sold on the idea that articles written in the paper were belittling to Millennials. Jennings explained, that it is not what the newspapers say but rather, how they say it. Others, like Amy Zerba, an expert on young adults and news and former producer of CNN online, was interested in the panel’s opinions on how the media could improve.

The insight of the Millennial panel gave the audience a better understanding of how their generation perceives the media as well as how they obtain the news from a variety of sources. The panel was sure to inform the audience that their generation is interested in the news, they just receive it in different forms.

Click here to watch the video.