A few years ago, I interned for a start-up media company called Wisecrack. With the slogan "Laugh Harder, Grow Smarter", the goal of Wisecrack was to create entertaining and funny YouTube videos for a young audience that also sneakily gave lessons in philosophy, history, and political science. My favorite show in our channel, 8-Bit Philosophy, used characters from old-school video games to depict the trial of Socrates, Karl Marx's critique of capitalism, and other heady topics with a fun and quirky presentation.
One night, I went to the Wisecrack office in Silver Lake to attend a party for a subscriber milestone we had reached. I was hanging out with Jacob, the founder and CEO, when a fellow intern came up to us and asked Jacob a question.
"So, what's Wisecrack's strategy? Where do you guys see yourselves going?" he asked.
I don't remember Jacob's exact response, but the gist of it was that the company was betting that people would want to go deeper with the content they saw on the web. They don't just want to see silly cat videos or memes. People spend so much time on the Internet already that eventually they'll want to learn something. Humans are naturally curious.
It was a bold strategy. Social media platforms generally seem have a certain quality of superficiality and instant gratification, so it felt counterintuitive. However, I think it makes sense. Especially for journalism.
Every day, we have access to a jet stream of information through our computers and phones. We can find out what's happening anywhere in the world instantly. What can set you apart, however, is how you contextualize that information and explain why it matters. In my view, this is what will cause young viewers to value your show or your content over others.
One good example of this is "The Daily," a podcast from the New York Times. Each weekday, the show does a 20- minute deep dive on one important and timely issue. Although I may not be getting the full breadth of news for the day in an episode, I'm getting a lot of nuance and I'm learning something. Whenever I check my Stitcher app to stream podcasts, I find that "The Daily" is consistently one of the most popular and most downloaded shows. So it's clear that they're doing something right.
How can we translate this outlook to a nightly TV broadcast?
We can experiment with "explainers" in the style of websites such as Vox that employ this format to teach readers about complex subjects. When legislators were debating various options for repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act last year, I consistently read Vox to understand the different proposals. They employed graphics, cartoons, and other methods to help you understand what was happening. Why not do something like that on our show? One issue that seems to constantly make its way to our show is immigration; it's just an ever-present issue in our community. Do viewers know what DACA is? Do they know how immigration impacts economies and public policies? Do they know why they should care? Perhaps we could employ graphics to lay out the policies and their effects in a broader sense. Maybe we could bring in a cartoonist to illustrate the migration flows. Or provide timelines on the issue. Or invite viewers to check out web content that goes more in-depth on a story we discuss on the show.
Another crucial aspect of forward-thinking news is its newfound ability to create a dialogue from what was originally a monologue. I'm reminded of the famous scene from the 1976 classic film Network, when news anchor Howard Beale implored viewers to get up out of their chairs and scream "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not gonna take this anymore!" What I would suggest is not as extreme, of course, but it speaks to the ability of journalists to create a conversation. Social media is a great tool to use this. Why not broadcast the entire show on Facebook Live, rather than just live guests?
In addition, we can use these platforms to create a method of "solutions-based journalism." When we do a story about recycling, why not ask viewers via social media what they do to lower their carbon footprint? When we do a story about college diversity, why not gauge how viewers feel about inclusivity efforts on this campus?
The key to attracting young viewers to your broadcast, I think, is to create a smart and engaging show that creates distinct and authentic conversations. It's a dumb stereotype that millennials are only interested in taking selfies and speaking in emojis. In fact, millennials are the most educated and community-oriented generation in the consumer market currently. Today's journalism has to work with that.