Niche, Youth Audience, Digital Natives, New Media Overview

Week 2 of the first session of Duke TIP @ UGA starts tomorrow.
This week in the "M & M" class (Media and the Message), we will be delving into the topic of "new media."
But first, tomorrow we will discuss niche media and how media outlets are covering teenagers. Part of my research explores this vary topic. To see what newspapers are doing to garner children and teenage readers, you can download a PDF of my Cox Institute for Newspaper Management Studies report, Youth 2.0: A Study of Resources Used by Newspapers to Attract Young Readers.
In the afternoon we will discuss traditional media's move to 2.0 methods and examine some of mainstream media's online products, such as NYTimes.com We may also discuss some of the changes in reporting that new media has allowed. Ryan Sholin has an excellent list of "tools" that journalists these days can use to help them do their jobs.
Students will write an analysis of a mainstream media outlet's Web page or compare an article in print versus an article online from the same news outlet.
We'll also preview on Monday some of this week's topics with an overview of the digital media landscape and changes in news, media and journalism it is bringing. We may even watch some of the Columbia University Journalism School's "Changing Media Landscape, 2008" conference. We might read Stephen Lacy's take on "The Future of Local Journalism" or Robert Picard's argument that journalists deserve low pay. We'll likely look at Jeff Jarvis' decree for newspapers to look past their pasts or Washington Post media columnist's column, "The Death of Print?"
In the evening we'll discuss digital natives and look at Pew Internet & American Life Project Director Lee Rainie's presentation outlining what a "digital native" is. We'll also take a look at this nifty Business Week graphic breaking down the generational divides of who does what on the Internet as well as a Pew report about generations online.