Youth-focused news is on the rise
Add Axios as your preferred source to
see more of our stories on Google.
Illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios
New companies are latching onto youth-focused news products for this year's election news and beyond.
Why it matters: Some of these efforts can be lucrative. Parents juggling work-from-home schedules with at-home learning are willing to pay for news products for their kids, executives tell Axios.
Driving the news: The Week Junior, a weekly current affairs magazine targeted to kids from the same publisher as The Week, now has 75,000 paid subscribers, executives tell Axios.
- The magazine, which is mainly a subscription business but has ads and strategic partnerships, launched in March, right at the start of the pandemic.
- "We're adding about 4,000 new subscribers every month and we have subscribers in all 50 states," says The Week Junior's Editor in Chief Andrea Barbalich.
- Barbalich notes that the 32-page subscription magazine is being used by hundreds of educators and parents around country. "We report on news in real time as happening as any news magazine for adults would do."
The trend has increased amid the pandemic, as more parents are looking for resources to help educate kids at home.
- TIME for Kids launched a new digital subscription last month to bring its classroom news content to kids at home during the pandemic.
- NBC Nightly News has launched a kids edition of its broadcast with Lester Holt, which includes a digest of the top news headlines, broken down for kids.
- Nickelodeon said it hired former "60 Minutes" producer Magalie Laguerre-Wilkinson to lead their news division for kids.
- NowThis News launched NowThis Kids in April with Cheerios as a launch sponsor.
- The New York Times has been creating a monthly print section of its newspaper for kids since 2017 that parents can also license online.
The bottom line: For legacy news companies, kids-focused news products can also help lengthen the longevity of their brands.
