The Gen-X Newspaper
Background:
Developments, across most of the urban world.
1.Printed Newspapers are losing money,
2.Losing out to various electronic formats,
3.Sales (circulation) is static or progressively down,
4.Drop has little to do with the consumers’ buying power or cover prices,
5.Readers younger than 25 are NOT enamoured by hard-copy newspapers,
6.English as a language is the biggest loser,
7.Vernacular papers on the other hand are mostly safe or growing,
8.Growth coming from geographies which are underdeveloped and underexposed in the financial and media terms, respectively,
9.English Language Papers (ELPs) are NOT in a position to easily shift focus to those two factors (of younger gen’s apathy & vernacular growth), both for historical & financial reasons.
We may conclude that a completely out of the box approach may work, in addressing the Gen-X problem
How does Gen-X gather Information?
a.TV to some extent,
b.Internet,
c.Mobile Phone content &
d.Social Networks.
Does the Gen-X require Information?
Of course they do!
BUT, not in the traditional sense of “news”.
Financial data is not yet of key importance.
In spite of globalisation, Gen-X is a locavore,
GX of US bother lil about UK’s elections, or Suu Kyi’s party’s breakdown. They are practical.
GX lives in the present & their process only what affects them “now”.
Therefore, the key information indices are very different for them,
NOT surprising that there’s a growing disconnect.

What do they use to gather information, communicate?
Net, cell, word-of-mouth / peers.

Which platform cums closest to news-dissemination, scalable, low-cost, universally accepted & adaptable to vernacular? Text or SMS!

However text-based news / RSS type updates are not doing too well! So, where do we go frm hre?
What will sync the 2? How?

The Sync:
Check a headline news article. You’ll have to click the link, as I cant xceed 500 words: "http://bit.ly/smspaper"-
Girl Marries lover, father kills her:

Converted to pop “text” lingo:

FTHR KILS GRL 4 MRYING LOVR: 20yr grl wz hckd 2 deth by hr fthr, bros & cuzns in Kaushambi UP, 4 daring 2 mry w/o the fmlys consnt. Vctim’s mthr repo the inci & police hv arrstd th fthr ho hs confsd.

SMS form tks 20% space & cnvey the same msg!
Theoretically a ful ENP can be dn to abt 2 pgs or half a sheet of newsprint.

The obvs ?: “wht if I wnt 2 “rd mre?”

We’ll, hr is th “sync”.
ELPs have strtd prntng graphic-codes, u cn point ur cell cam/web-cam (like a bar-code reader) & voila, u land on the web-page!

+tionally, prntng, news-prnt & logstx – the lrgst portions of ELP costs wl b redced 2 a small frctn. magin th Crbn Cr 1 cn ern!

Th reg frmat hs 2 carry on, sideX side, 4 sum tme.

Th potential of re-pckagng a 2-pager in intrstng forms is smply fnomnal.

Ths is probly th nxt gen of n/pprs 2 cum!