In the latest issue of Press Time, the magazine for the Newspaper Association of America, Jim Conaghan makes a statistical argument that teens really do read the paper.

Conaghan is the NAA’s chief economist and vice president of research and in the article he reviews the findings of the latest data on teen newspaper usage. The data provided by TRU (www.tru-insight.com) reports that out of 2,000 teenagers surveyed, 73 percent of them read the newspaper and 69 percent visit newspaper websites. Also, noted was that about 25 percent of the teens surveyed read the paper two to three times weekly and 38 percent visited online websites that frequently.

Conaghan makes an argument that teen usage is definitely a market that cannot be overlooked and I would have to agree. It is ultimately the young users that determine the future of the newspaper’s products. By cultivating a culture of young readers, how can the newspaper ever go away?

Newspapers know this already. An example is the development of Newspapers In Education (NIE). This program gives the paper to primary and secondary schools for various programs to get kids accustomed to the paper.

Another example of behavioral marketing is when Nestle introduced coffee to Japan. Years ago Japan was known for its dependence to tea. Initial attempts to introduce coffee to the Japanese market failed miserably, so in order to penetrate into the market Nestle created a more subtle introduction. Instead of the coffee drink, Nestle pushed coffee flavored products like candies to get people “hooked” to the taste. Over the years, the coffee taste became more and more accepted as a flavor and when Nestle introduced coffee for the last time, it was a success.

Let’s take it back to newspapers. What is the future of the newspaper as a media entity? More and more the newspaper is being read for leisure and news is being accessed on the Internet. How do newspapers take advantage of this movement?

The key is to embrace the movement and run with it. The physical paper is not going anywhere anytime soon. However, in order to leverage the newspaper as a brand, every delivery medium has to be leveraged. This means print, net, and mobile.

To reach the younger customers, newspapers have to focus more on local news that pertain to them since getting your national news has so many competitors. The newspaper’s website has to focus on creating a social presence. The websites should stop focusing on just providing information, but instead, be able to really connect stories to real people.

Lastly newspapers need to leverage mobile phones to interact with the previous two mediums. Look at the popularity of twitter. People like being updated on what’s going on with other people, groups, and anything that pertains to them. However, note that too much info is not an update. What used to be a quick two paragraphed email to someone is now perceived as an epic novel. Twitter is the perfect example of the success quick updates because they limit updates to 140 characters. It’s time to leverage mobile to provide these quick updates to your users. Does age matter? No. The Nielsen Company did a survey and found that, out of those surveyed, the cell phone users 65 and above received on average 14 texts per month. So yes, even grandma get texted.

How are you implementing mobile to leverage your brand?

Wanna have some fun? Check out these articles from 2004. They discussed how teens read the paper.