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from the fact that most information
providers are working with the wrong
form of behavior—the Gutenberg one,
with which they just feel more comfortable.
Too readily they attribute the
contemporary model as being simply
the way kids do it, or how information
will be processed in the future,
when in fact nearly all of us behave
like that now.
All of these changes in behavior
pose many challenges for journalists.
However, amid the massive choices of
There were many surprises when
my colleagues at Northwestern
University’s Media Management
Center (MMC) and I spent hours earlier
this year observing and listening
to a diverse group of 89 young people
talk about their experiences getting
election news online. We expected
that these 17- to 22-year-olds would
distrust “mainstream media,” be drawn
to content produced by other young
people, love opinionated commentary,
and tilt toward sites rich with video
and flashy graphics.
Instead, as we reported in “From
‘Too Much’ to ‘Just Right:’ Engaging
Millennials in Election News on the
Web,” we found they:
• Trusted news about the election more
from well-known news organizations
than from other sources.
• Valued the expertise and reporting
of journalists more than opinions or
comments, even from other young
people.
• Valued many of the traditional roles
of journalists, including separating
the wheat from the chaff, selecting
30 Nieman Reports | Winter 2008
information and the patchwork quilt
way in which it is provided and the
speed at which consumers browse
to find it, there is a gaping need for
judgment calls made with the foundational
strength of trust. Right now
consumers of information on the Web
tend to make up their own minds
about the reliability of information,
often through methods of personal
crosschecking, and they tend to ignore
the established symbols of authority.
If this pattern continues, then there
what’s important and what people
will want to talk about, displaying
things in attractive ways that indicate
their relative importance, providing
up-to-date information, and striving
for the facts and the truth, not the
spin.
• Often avoided news video as being
too time-consuming.
• Often downgraded sites with lively
graphics as not seeming serious
enough.
Things they like in other contexts
on the Internet—from humor to usergenerated
content to social networking
to participation—they didn’t like in
the context of news. To them, news
is different—and serious.
But the biggest surprise of all was
how often these young people used
the same words to describe their reaction
to a variety of Web sites. Most
frequently heard was the phrase “too
much”:
I feel like it’s too much sometimes,
too much unnecessary material.
(Justin, 19)
is a real danger that journalists will
follow the path of librarians to a place
where the knowledge they can offer
gets swallowed up in a sea of selfdiscovery.
�
David Nicholas is director of the
School of Library, Archive and Information
Studies, the University College
London Centre for Publishing and the
research group CIBER. More information
about his work can be found at
www.ucl.ac.uk/slais/david-nicholas/.
What Young People Don’t Like About the Web—And
News On It
‘… news organizations need to pay attention to what young people say about
what makes them tune out on news sites.’
BY VIVIAN VAHLBERG
It was just … too much stuff. …
By the time you get down here …
I don’t even want to finish it. …
It was all thrown at you at once.
It was just kind of overwhelming.
… There’s so much going on in a
younger person’s life already. …
They are stressed at school and
with work and those different