Age in the Press

Abstract

Our world, and those of us who live in it, are getting older.

With a worldwide demographic transformation toward “an aging society” before us, new issues and thus new stories evolve that warrant widespread media coverage. But is the print media — arguably the eyes and ears of our society — taking due notice? Newspapers try to reach out to people as readers, as consumers and as citizens.

In many regards, our lives flow through the press, since it is in the midst of our communities. But the press also contributes in its own choices of action to the creation of perceptions and awareness. People — of various age and experience — are creating newspapers, but are the newspapers created catering to the news and needs of all people, or only the needs of those in “desirable” demographic categories?

An aging society, and the issues that such a changing society brings, should affect the press in many arenas. It presents news as well as the potential to change news values. It affects the use of different media forms through the day. It will have an enormous impact on the economy. It changes living patterns and the most basic family interactions in ways that strongly affect patterns of media consumption. It is perhaps the most important transition to cover during the course of this century. Editorial leadership can make a difference. There are newspapers of higher and lower standards in the real world, and there must be room for improvement, especially when a new type of journalism clearly would be met with vivid interest from its readers.

This study tries to cover an aging society in relation to all these aspects of the press: its internal realities, its commercial relations and its public responsibilities.