Insert Name of Defendant HERE

by Dan Ward

Roger Pynn wrote recently that he wonders if Central Florida will ever get over the image we get from high-profile trials.

Judging from this screen capture from Central Florida News 13, I’m guessing the media have yet to get over the last high-profile trial held here, and the public fascination it generated.

Template journalism at its finest.

Local Matters

by Roger Pynn

A report from the Pew Research Center has important pointers for media companies, and perhaps good news for newspapers and the communities they serve.  The study, in partnership with the Knight Foundation, says that nearly 75 percent of adults follow local news “most of the time, whether or not something important is happening.”

What Pew calls “local news enthusiasts” are generationally diverse … “one quarter are Generation Y (ages 18-34), about two in 10 are Gen Xers (ages 35-46) or Younger Boomers (ages 47-56), and roughly one in 10 are older Baby Boomers (ages 57-65) in the Silent Generation (ages 66-74), or from the G.I. Generation (age 75+).”

Then there are the Millennials … or Gen Y … the crowd born between 1980 and the turn of the century.  They fall into what Pew refers to as “less enthusiastic followers of local news.”

The challenge … for people in the news business, and for the community leaders they write about, to figure out what really matters to Millennials before it is too late for both.