Roland's post led me to a pdf file written by Todd McCauley who outlines a strategy that newspapers could use to engage, solicit interaction and feedback from a younger audience which would attract the 18-34 year olds.

In my post titled Let's Talk Turkey about Blogging it mentions statistics collected from what was CyberAtlas, that says:

"The demographics suggest that 51.5% of all new blogs created are created by the 13-19 year olds with 20-29 year olds taking second place at 39.6%."

This is a clear indication that younger people want to have their voices heard. I don't know what part of Canada Roland Tanglao grew up in, but the area I grew up in seemed to include a number bureaucracies, as pointed out by Mr. Godin, that just want you "to go away."

At the risk of sounding like a middle-aged whining adolescent, newspapers aren't any different from Mr. Godin's description of bureaucracies "who don't want the whys working their way up the chain." We have learned this lesson well, which is evident from the poor turn-outs at election time. Newspapers are more like Seth Godin's bureaucracies who "encourage their people to be the first and only line of defense" so that editors, jobbers by nature, can just make it to quitting time without really having to give a "rats ass" about any controversial issues that would ruffle the feathers of the the "good 'ol boys" club. If the newspaper started to lose sponsors, you can bet that editor would be looking for a new job.

Let's look at an example. From the CBC News: Opposition leaders unite to guard EI surplus

The four federal opposition parties have announced a plan that will try to stop Finance Minister Paul Martin from using the Employment Insurance surplus to pay for other priorities.

The EI surplus will be about $20 billion by the end of the year. There wasn't supposed to be a surplus, but by starving the people who could use this money, the government has created a situation that screams "Oh those poor people! What should we do? Hey... anyone want to party?!!!"

The PDF article written by Todd McCauley mentions a website called "Debatables.com" which was "A Web log on which a handful of writers/editors scan and post news from a variety of sources along with their own commentary" and encourage feedback "to provide a place for a segment of young readers to have something to talk about and to feel they’re getting smarter about topics of interest to them."

Well...well! It isn't any surprise to see that the site is no longer active. See, the politicians want your vote, but they don't want any public forum which might hold them accountable and coerce answers that might imply further corruption and scandal. And, any newspaper that was to adopt the radical idea of a web blog, would keep an editor busy just deleting posts and questions. The editor might not know where the EI surplus is going, and if he can keep his job, he doesn't have to know. He's got a few more comments to delete... then it's quitting time.