Gen Z isn’t reading your site, now what?

Yes, things were great a decade ago when all these platforms were sending news websites tons of traffic, but now we need to meet readers where they are. That means coming up with a social media strategy and creating content that values engagement and intimacy over visits to your website ...”

Rob Tornoe, digital editor and writer, The Philadelphia Inquirer

Back in 2024, I had a conversation with Chicago Public Media’s Aron Pilhofer — in the early days of what news publishers have come to describe as the search apocalypse, or “Google Zero.”

At the time, Pilhofer was the chief product officer at The Minnesota Star-Tribune, which like other local news outlets was coping with a large decrease in search traffic as Google shifted to answering users’ questions directly. But that wasn’t the biggest fear on Pilhofer’s mind. 

“18- to 24-year-olds today consume news less traditionally than 18- to 24-year-olds did 10 years ago, and we’ve seen that gap increase year after year after year,” Pilhofer said. “That is the coming tsunami that we as an industry need to be worried about.”

Newspapers have always struggled to attract younger readers, who are often distracted and somewhat transient into their mid-20s. The problem has increased in the digital age, where young people are free to follow their interests and tune out news entirely, presenting a problem for newsrooms looking to attract the next generation of readers to support and consume their journalism. 

Where young readers go, their smartphones follow. Unfortunately, tech giants certainly aren’t helping young people find the news. Facebook and X have all but cut off traffic to news outlets, Google has dramatically reduced the flow of search traffic to most publishers, and popular mobile-first platforms, like Instagram and TikTok, aren’t designed with referral traffic in mind. 

That’s only part of the problem. 

For years, the Reuters Institute has done a longitudinal report looking at this trend, and its result couldn’t be clearer. In 2013, about 68% of readers between the ages of 25 and 34 indicated they were interested in the news. In 2026, that number has plummeted down to 42%, and the trend shows no signs of improving. 

Reporters and editors that came up thinking institutional knowledge was valued are facing young readers who have grown up in a social media age where personality dominates everything and information is available instantly. Nearly half of those young readers (44%) said social media, video networks like YouTube, and AI chatbots were their main sources of news. 

As this year’s report explains,“The story is about the move away from news websites as a source of news to social media and other forms of ‘distributed’ access,” which has emerged “hand-in-hand with somewhat diverging interests, expectations and needs when it comes to journalism — a different understanding of what news is and should be.”

Thankfully, it’s not hopeless. Young people actually consume more news content today than they did a decade ago, thanks to the magical smartphone following them everywhere they go. Their sources are simply way more diverse than clicking on a news organization’s website, spanning social media, podcasts and short video feeds. They value creators over brands, intimacy over institutions. They come across news less intentionally and more incidentally.

So, how do we win them back? 

For starters, let’s stop thinking about the all-mighty clickthru. Yes, things were great a decade ago when all these platforms were sending news websites tons of traffic, but now we need to meet readers where they are. That means coming up with a social media strategy and creating content that values engagement and intimacy over visits to your website, even if it means less referrals and relying on platforms fighting to keep readers on their own websites. 

The New York Times has been at the forefront of this trend, thanks to its embrace of vertical video. Journalists across the newsroom have bought into the strategy, filming short videos about their stories or the news they cover, which get distributed across The Times’ many digital platforms and its social media accounts. Importantly, it also includes a “Watch” tab in The Times’ main news app, where readers can scroll vertical video stories the way they would on Instagram or TikTok. 

“We want to be a destination,” Jordan Vita, vice president of product at the Times, told The Hollywood Reporter. “We want our app to be as satisfying for listening and watching as it is for reading. We’re just really acknowledging that people are getting their news in multiple different formats, and that format you may prefer may vary based on time of day. We want to make it accessible and meet that need.”

The Philadelphia Inquirer, where I work, has also found success leaning on personalities in our newsroom. Tom Fitzgerald, The Inquirer’s transportation report, was nominated for a Webby Award for a series of videos exploring mass transit in Philadelphia, appropriately titled, “What the F–.” We also hired our first-ever social video host, Ariane Datil, who explores the city and helps explain The Inquirer’s stories to a large and engaged following on Instagram and other digital platforms. 

Local news can also be a differentiator for younger readers facing a nationalized news landscape. Stories about the Trump administration can be found anywhere, but young readers looking for information about their local communities can develop trust with a local newsroom. Many don’t yet value that information enough to pay for it. 

Instead of giving up on those readers, Swedish media group NTM (Nordisk Tidningsmedia) developed a new subscription package that includes free access to its website and app for readers under the age of 25. Jens Pettersson, NTM’s head of editorial development, called the plan a “game changer,” allowing readers to develop a deeper connection with the news organization’s content, which they shifted to aim for 30- to 39-year-old readers.  

“At the beginning of 2025, NTM had 34,240 subscribers under the age of 50. By the end of the year, that number had grown to 50,057, representing a 46% increase,” and including 13,000 new subscribers under the age of 25, Pettersson wrote in a piece for the International News Media Association. 

“Importantly, 90% of these subscribers had no prior relationship with NTM, confirming the initiative reached a genuinely new audience,” Pettersson wrote. “Only 3% had previously held a paid subscription, limiting cannibalisation.” 

Smaller, platform-driven news outlets like RocaNews, Gen, știri in Romania, #UseTheNews in Germany, and #diez in Moldova have had success attracting Gen-Z readers by focusing their growth on mobile-first social media networks through content that appeals to younger readers, including news explainers, short videos and a funny meme or two thrown in. 

The key in all this is speaking to young readers, not just about them.

“I don’t think there’s one simple answer. I think we need to think about developing new products that better fit into how young people consume news content more broadly,” Pilhofer prophetically told me back in 2024.“This is a multifaceted problem that goes beyond just launching a TikTok channel or something like that.” 

If anything, this problem is like climate change, a slow-moving catastrophe young people care deeply about but newsrooms struggle to cover. There’s a lesson there somewhere. 

Rob Tornoe is a cartoonist and columnist for Editor and Publisher, where he writes about trends in digital media. He is also a digital editor and writer for The Philadelphia Inquirer. You can reach him at robtornoe@gmail.com.