Anthony Albanese is giving off “hardcore spy vibes”. Amber Heard is in “deep financial doo-doo”. Oh, and “short kings” are “sex gods” now, apparently.
You’d be forgiven for guessing I’d plucked these quotes from BuzzFeed or Pedestrian.TV. But believe it or not, they’re from The Australian.
Last Wednesday, the Murdoch-owned masthead launched a spinoff youth site called The Oz. And the content is about as far from a Greg Sheridan column on multilateral defence treaties as you can imagine. No wonder — its journalists are all women and decades younger than the Paul Kellys and Gerard Hendersons they share an office with.
These young recruits are clearly talented, for the content is slick — at least, it’s a lot better than The Australian’s previous efforts at youth engagement, which included Editor-at-Large Ticky Fullerton performing a Hamilton-inspired rap encouraging workers back to the office.
The soft progressivism of some of its coverage has been criticised as hypocritical for masking the paper’s otherwise dogged conservatism.
And sure enough, amid some interesting reportage, The Oz has run some pieces on “hardcore rules guy” Dan Andrews and Greens MPs calling China-hawks racist that would make their “dear papa” parent company proud.
But beyond The Oz’s ideological contradictions, its content begs another question that applies to all “youth media” outlets — why do they so spectacularly underestimate young people’s journalistic tastes?
Five Shocking Ways Youth Sites Patronise Young People, and it’s like Cringe AF
The Oz evidently assumes, as countless media companies trying to tap the youth market have before it, that writing for young people in the digital age necessitates mimicking “BuzzFeed style”. A lexicon popularised by the US media giant in the mid-late 2000s, it entails:
- Using copious, often outdated slang terms. The Oz’s pages sport “clap back-ery”, “thirst trap”, God “slay” the Queen, and more
- Explaining political and economic phenomena via ill-fitting celebrity similes, as if this is the only way young people can understand anything. For instance, The Oz says wage growth has been “lower than Julia Fox’s jeans” and inflation has made “the Rob Kardashian of vegetables [iceberg lettuce] more expensive than a coffee”
- Idolising said celebrities, including depicting them as literal deities. The Oz finished an article on pay transparency with, “In the name of The Father, The Son and Rhianna [sic]: ‘Pay me what you owe me'”
- Feigning ironic detachment with the linguistic equivalent of eye rolls, because it’s totes uncool to approach issues earnestly. You must signal your jaded cynicism by opening articles with lines like, “OK where to begin with this…”
- Putting. Full. Stops. After. Every. Word. — to suggest you’re searching for an “Amen, sister!”: “being out here just trying to live feels like we’re fighting for Harry Styles tickets. Every. Damn. Day.”
Young people deserve better, and now they’re getting it
The implicit assumptions behind this writing style reflect a tired stereotype of young people — that we don’t care about societal issues, particularly politics, and can only be cajoled into such terrain through frivolity, irony and distraction. But research tells us this isn’t true.
Media organisations are right to assume that traditional journalism can be alienating to younger readers. But this is largely due to legacy media’s stolid formatting and assumed knowledge, not its unflinching engagement with serious topics. Indeed, by only presenting news to young people via a postmodern melange of memes and in-jokes, youth-focused outlets risk exacerbating young people’s disenchantment with the media because the issues they care about (climate change, for instance) aren’t being taken seriously. Irreverence can be useful, but only insofar as it aids journalism’s task of holding power to account.
That young people are tiring of meme-ified journalism is reflected in the youth media market’s evolution. Some of the fastest-growing youth-focused outlets, some run by young people themselves, adapt very traditional styles of reporting to new formats, without all the patronising “Yas, queens”.
Australian journalism start-up The Daily Aus, for instance, founded by Sam Koslowski (27) and Zara Seidler (25), produces news breakdowns for social media. They have more than 350,000 followers on Instagram (the highest of any Australian media outlet) and frequently top Spotify’s news podcast charts. The publication’s voice is scrupulously no-frills and even-handed.
Then there’s the remarkable Leonardo Puglisi, a 14-year-old reporter who founded video journalism company 6 News, which has more than 10,000 followers on both YouTube and Twitter. Leo is just halfway through high school, but he’s already interviewed Anthony Albanese and Scott Morrison (who evaded Leo’s questions by disparaging his source, Crikey).
Outlets like Vice have also grown their local coverage and employed more young multi-platform journalists — see its recent excellent reporting on the floods in Queensland and New South Wales.
Such promising examples show the way forward for other media outlets — young people don’t need sugary content; they just want good journalism on the platforms they use.
