• by John Gaffney , July 2, 2002

USA Today founder Al Neuharth is back in the news lately, this time kicking around some ideas for a national newspaper aimed at "kids." He says the recent flurry of articles speculating on his plans for a kids’ national newspaper stemmed from a series of meetings he had with several companies in April. Outside of Neuharth’s interest, the project doesn’t have much form, yet.

Neuharth has not settled on the exact age range the project should target, although pre-teens have been talked about the most. He’s not totally convinced that a project aimed at kids can work from a readership and advertising business perspective. He is sure that the newspaper business needs to build a better foundation with younger readers if it is to have a chance to grow in the future.

"This may or may not develop into a plan," he says. "We need to find out more about whether newspapers can attract young kids. At USA Today we tried a number of ways to get teens to read, but they didn’t have much advertising appeal. We need to instill the habit of reading a newspaper into kids somehow."

Although he has officially retired more times than Muhammad Ali, the founder of USA Today — and arguably the person most responsible for the changes seen in daily newspapers over the past 30 years — is still active. And the guy who named his autobiography Confessions of an S.O.B. is still quick with the wit and the blunt truth about newspapers.

"Newspapers need to keep pace with the other media as they change," he says from his Cocoa Beach, Fl., home and office. "The content and appearance need to change and adjust to compete with other media. Newspapers are not competing with each other. They are competing with other forms of media. They are competing for the time and attention of the general public."

If he went ahead with it, would a kids’ national newspaper work? A recent report published in NAA’s Presstime says that the content areas that score big with young people are entertainment, sports, and civic journalism (or information that helps communities solve problems). According to John Bartolomeo, managing partner of content consultant Clark, Martire and Bartolomeo of Englewood Cliffs, N.J., the Internet holds much more promise with the young generation. But he also told a recent NAA conference that product improvements designed to attract younger readers "cannot be devised at the desks of editors in their 40s and 50s." Such improvements "must be researched and not assumed."

Research also shows that readership among younger adult demographics has dropped as much as 20 percent over the past five years. There’s not a lot of research to show whether teens or pre-teens would intend to read a print product aimed at them.

Neuharth is also aware, however, that newspapers, including his former company Gannett, are under tremendous pressure to increase circulation and ad revenue. Attracting a teen or pre-teen audience would be a step in the right direction. He is also aware that media planners and buyers have local ad options in a turf where print news once ruled. But newspapers, he says, still provide a unique and vital advertising vehicle.

"Daily newspapers still have the highest penetration of the local audience," he says. "It is the most accessible and most affordable way for people to get their news. No one TV program can command attention in a given community like newspapers can. Newspapers have to be heard."