This week I am wrapping up my first week of classes in what will (hopefully) be my final year at college.
I have been through enough classes to know, what makes or breaks a class more than anything else is the professor. I have had professors who yell, prattle on, make off color comments, offer to buy the class beers and some that were just another student. This semester my professors run the gambit, and I was looking forward to a terrible class when I signed up for Art History.
But I was wrong. The professor (we’ll call him Dr. Smith) is on top of his game and knows how to engage a room full of young adults. Dr. Smith, not being so old himself, knows that Art History is looked upon as unnecessary memorization that many students will forget. He could have packed it in with boring powerpoint presentations and that would have been that.
Instead Dr. Smith engages the class w
ill a no bullshit style of teaching. He moves quickly, tells you only what you need to know and moves on. He occasionally throws in a joke or interesting historical antidote (like this urinal that the Philadelphia Meusem of Art purchased for millions).
For me, it drew a lot of parallels to what is keeping young people away from the media. It has nothing to do with the technology or Facebook or MySpace, but it has everything to do with the content. Young people don’t want to be bullshitted: and thats why The Daily Show is popular. Young people want only the facts so they can move on: thats why the internet is king for news. Young people also like a tiny dose of comedy or entertainment: again the Daily Show and think of what SportsCenter does for sports. But most of all, young people want news that doesn’t come off as the mouthpiece for the establishment, but from someone who is honest and smart at the same time. If some old codger had stood up and gave me facts in a line item fashion I could assume that he could care less whether I take his class. But Dr. Smith was passionate, he made sure his passion came across to all of the normally apathetic students. He structured the class in such a way that if you even left for the bathroom for 5 minutes you would miss a lot. Unfortunately, I can say that if I didn’t read my newspaper, or check most Web sites today I would be just fine.
If an Art History professor can keep heads up and cell phones off, than I’m sure the media can do the same for young people. Creating profiles on Facebook or adding comments won’t do anything to attract a new audience. Make the readers trust you and feel like they can never miss a day and they will come. And who knows? They may even be younger than 25.