Developing stories that Gen Z cares about

One of the most important aspects of reporting is knowing who your audience is. As someone who is in the same generation as my audience, I think I have a good grasp of what Gen Z cares and wants to learn more about.

One specific example I think our audience specifically engaged with is a class action TikTok settlement story. The story was about how Tiktok was allegedly selling the data of its users and now its users may be entitled to financial compensation for this alleged privacy breach. As a TikTok user myself, this story was particularly interesting to me and since I know a lot of other USC students also use TikTok, I knew it would be interesting to them too.

I think our USC in the Spotlight segment is another way we are engaging our audience. In our segment, we highlight USC students who are doing interesting projects in the arts. This is something USC students may care about because it shows the different creative projects at USC that people can get involved in.

Many college students are also big fans of the Marvel Universe. I personally know people who marathon watched the movies in chronological order before the release of Avengers Endgame. I think sending our live reporter to the “Spiderman” trailer release and having her interview fans was another story that our audience was particularly interested in watching. One way we could have related this story more to our audience was by interviewing USC Marvel fans. Overall I believe I have a good sense of how to connect Gen Z with the news we cover. However, this connection could be improved if we did more social media campaigns to learn what news matters most to college students.

This story was written as an assignment in JOUR403: Television News Production with Professor Stacy Scholder. Annenberg Media student editors also reviewed the story and published it per newsroom guidelines.