Australia’s young adults are re-engaging in news and current affairs, thanks to dedicated youth media outlets.
With popular culture and news site Pedestrian.TV celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, having grown from a magazine in DVD format in 2005, major youth-oriented media platforms now engage more than a million young Australians in current affairs each month.
With more than 200,000 subscribers across their website and social channels, Pedestrian.TV was listed on the BRW Fast 100 list of fastest growing companies in 2012.
Television giant Nine Entertainment now holds a stake in the company that covers all aspects of youth culture, from hard news to music, fashion, travel and sport – as well as a dedicated jobs page where employers can post vacancies aimed at the 16-35 demographic.
“Pedestrian is written in a way that appeals to me. It speaks my language. It serves its purpose,” said Lucinda Price, a 20-year-old advertising student at RMIT University.
“I want to read about the Kardashians. I’m also interested in ISIS, as well as Bronwyn Bishop. I first read about Golden Gaytime in tub form from Pedestrian – also great. It isn’t SBS, but it isn’t trying to be, either.”
While some argue that these sites lack editorial integrity on serious issues, Junkee’s assistant editor Alex McKinnon disagreed, saying the platforms’ success is due to giving readers a comprehensive coverage of things that matter to them.
Junkee, a similarly large Australian youth platform, is owned by Junkee Media – who also publish youth music sites FasterLouder and inthemix, LGBTI site SameSame and travel title AWOL.
“The pop culture stuff is always going to be popular and it’s what the site has been based on, but we’ve found that our audience are actually very keen for political writing as well,” Mr McKinnon said.
“That can range from the really flippant stuff, like when Tony Abbott ate the onion, to more serious discussions about topics that you wouldn’t expect a lot of people to engage with – house prices, climate change, Islamophobia, the role of the media.
“Often we’re surprised by how popular covering some of those more dense and knotty topics can be, and how hungry people are to know about that stuff.”
What makes these emerging sites relevant to young Australians is their strong social media footprints that see their stories continually pushed to young people’s news feeds and ‘mobile-first’ formats. With 100% of Australians aged 18-44 now online, more than two-thirds of them accessing the web on three or more devices, adapting to the mobile format is imperative.
“Mobile is going to dwarf desktop in the next few years, if it isn’t already,” Mr McKinnon said.
“Junkee is mobile-first, which is a difficult proposition for larger titles with legacies and existing technical arrangements and that kind of thing, so we have a natural advantage there.”
