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Opinion

Media isn't reaching new generation

Zack Haverkamp
Opinion Columnist 

There have always been two major challenges to U.S. journalism: harnessing new technology so higher quality news can reach wider segments of the population and adapting journalism's message to suit America's ever-changing social conditions. 

Cable news channels like CNN and Fox News have used new technology to try and satisfy half of this equation. Thanks to corporate-run news's deep pockets, these channels have spent millions on marketing their product to the new "average American." Their news is must-see television that hits viewers over the head with flashing images and dramatic music.

Independent journalism is on the opposite end of the spectrum. A journalist such as Amy Goodman of Democracy Now is a prime example. In terms of journalistic quality alone, Democracy Now is on the cutting edge of providing the public with responsible and accurate news. But the cold, hard truth is that most of America's new adult population would probably be able to listen to Amy Goodman for only about 60 seconds before coming to the conclusion that "Damn, this woman is boring!"

Thus illustrates the main reason that more '80s-born Americans watch Fox News than listen to genuine news programs such as Democracy Now: Their attention spans are screwed.

Cable news's justification for using eye-catching technology dispersed with substandard news is that they are only catering to what they have found to be their audience's preferences. Yet American youth were not always so easily distracted. In the 1960s, 18- to 25-year-olds were at the height of political and social awareness — without the benefits of the cutting-edge marketing to young adults that we have today. So what happened between the 1960s and the 1980s to account for the incoming generation to be deprived of the former's intellectual advances?

Americans born in the 1980s have had their attention spans stunted and ability to process information corrupted since childhood by the same marketing techniques in media now employed by cable news. These children have had their psyches under a state of constant assault by television since their earliest memories of Saturday morning cartoons and cereal commercials.

Though it's true that young adults' attention spans have been unnaturally eroded, it is inaccurate to say they cannot pay attention to anything longer than a few minutes. The '80s-born are able to pay attention, but they're forced to be selective about what they devote their limited attention to.

Jon Stewart's satirical The Daily Show is the best representation of this. A study by the Pew Research Center found that 50 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds turn to The Daily Show for news. Not only that, but the University of Pennsylvania's National Annenberg Election Survey revealed that those who watched The Daily Show scored 16 percent better on a current events questionnaire than those who did not.

The Daily Show's success with this age group is proof that the '80s-born can retain pertinent information. It only needs to be presented to them in a palpable way, before they can awaken to rehabilitate their atrophied attention spans.

For quality journalism to survive, there must be a concerted effort to attract a new generation of ADD-riddled Americans without having to "dumb down" any information. Somehow, journalists must discover how to cater to an audience who can barely remember where they parked their cars two hours ago, let alone what happened in the news last week.

Haverkamp, an opinion columnist for The Daily Cougar, 
can be reached via dccampus@mail.uh.edu