Zero Hora, one of the most admired newspapers globally, is owned by a longtime friend of the Media Management Center, Jayme Sirotsky, chairman of the RBS group. His top editor, Marcelo Rech, studied with the Center and early on embraced the findings of the Readership Institute.
The four cornerstones were the basis of the flagship newspaper’s growth early in this decade when the other top 10 Brazilian newspapers were slipping. Now Zero Hora is also a best practice newspaper for not only growing readership, but also for attracting young readers.
Rech was a presenter at the World Association of Newspapers Young Readers Roundtable, and talked about how he is solving the problem with young readers. Here are some approaches that have worked for the 175,000 circulation daily:
Audit the age of your newsroom. Zero Hora has 180 editorial employees, and 60 of them are under the age of 30. The newspaper has built in an engine for youthfulness. “All the supporting functions in the newsroom are occupied by journalism students,” Rech said. “They are mainly office boys and office girls. Those posts in the newsroom are made public in the local colleges. For every support function we have more than 100 candidates. Later, they will become journalists and work as reporters and editors.”
Tap the minds of young workers. More important than training young journalists is the insight that they bring to the newsroom. “They are a permanent focus group on young subjects,” Rech said. “They advise us, they correct us, and they suggest stories and the points of view that could interest young readers.”
Open windows of opportunity for young readers. “We open simultaneous windows to attract young people,” Rech said. “Not just with pages and supplements. We have 23 weekly and monthly supplements, but in every edition we do all we can to attract youngsters. Some of the windows are open for just one edition. Others are permanently open. Some are successful, some don’t work and we change quickly to another front. What is important is that we don’t trust just one or two sections to get their attention. We try to capture the youngsters for the whole paper, spreading the windows here and there.” He listed some of them: A teen supplement called Patrola which was created in partnership with an MTV-like broadcast. By virtue of that partnership, Patrola is a multi-media product and the two main reporters are hosts of the TV program. Like every section of the newspaper, Patrola has a readers council. A games council of reader/gamers do the reviews about gaming.
Turn local news events into special sections for young people, especially when it involves topics of interest to the young. “We have created several of those,” Rech said. “One was about science and technology...created and directed to youngsters. It attracts older people as well, but its face and mind are young. It has a tremendous amount of editing. So, it’s very graphic and easy to read. A popular offshoot of this supplement is a big science and technology fair in our city. Last year, for three days, Globaltech was visited by 80,000 people, 60 percent of them younger than 21. This interaction has been an important link between the paper and students.”
Think of high impact visuals in places that matter. “Thousands of youngsters start to read a paper through the sports section. So, we have to be very modern, daring, and innovative in dealing with sports,” he said.
Audit, track and set goals for everything that you do. Rech says a lot of the thing done in Zero Hora have been tried by other newspapers but they have not been done with intensity, frequency and consistency to matter. That is infusing the newspaper in total youth-think.
By Michael P. Smith (m-smith3@northwestern.edu) Michael P. Smith is executive director of the Media Management Center.
