The print-digital tension, through the eyes of a student

Here’s a very interesting piece from a student newspaper editor in the US:

My peers are interested in reading news, but they have no loyalties whatsoever about where it comes from. You can be the greatest columnist in the world, but it will be tough to garner a strong following from millennials.

Even some of my closest friends refused to pick up the newspaper I spent dozens of hours on each week. They’d rather get the day’s news from many different sources by scrolling through their Twitter feed.

This dichotomy is one of the most challenging things about teaching some journalism students today. They come in with a love for – and a focus on – the newspaper (or magazine) as a printed object, even as they are aware that their contemporaries – in the main – don’t consume news in that way.

There’s a distinction between loving journalism, and loving a printed product, and some students don’t see that. It’s going to be a tough career for them if they don’t wake up to it.