Rosarita Cuccoli, International Association of Sports Newspapers, introduced the idea that the key to reaching young readers is through sports and interactivity.
She mentioned that through sports children can learn a number of values. Keeping this in mind, youth readers can gain more of an interest in newspapers if the topics are sports related. Depor, one of the younger newspapers Cuccoli talks about, lists "passion" as the keyword of their motto. It fulfills the children's passion for sports by having numerous sports images. The newspaper also interacts with youth readers through entertainment pages that include crosswords and sudokus. Their strategy has paid off, bringing in readers between ages 12-25 which make up 61 percent of their overall readers.
Another newspaper, L'Equipe, brings in youth readers through the most effective platform, the Internet. To increase youth readership they have formed L’Equipe Junior, a twice-weekly online sports newspaper for children aged 9-14. It grabs a hold of the youth by having a cutting-edge design, interactive activities and providing both recent and historic sports content. The overall goal is to increase the habit of reading. Five-hundred schools currently have subscriptions for the online newspaper..
Gerard van der Weijden, an inventor, World Newspaper Reading Passport and World Football Reading Passport, STEPP, Belgium, discussed that kids can become engaged in a sports newspaper through their own sports teams and schools.
Some of the ideas Weijden listed included promoting a t-shirt contest with a slogan to represent a sports team and creating a cut-out passport with assignments. He elaborated more on the passport idea, explaining how each page should have special sports-related assignments.
Eduardo Tironi, executive editor and multimedia editor of LANCE!, the Brazilian sports media group, said that content should be written for the fans, not for readers.
He explained that LANCE! has engaged their audience through passionate "participative journalism." They have an interactive website that allows fans to produce content, which can also be published in the newspaper.
LANCE!'s finds 58 percent of their audience to be between the ages of 10 and 40. Most traditional newspapers have 43 percent of their audience over 40 years old.
"Passion journalism has guaranteed a great deal of success for us," says Tironi.
