News Organizations Try to Imprint Product on Younger Generation

SCARSDALE, N.Y. — Adam Berkin was playing a classic little trick on Cora Five’s fifth-grade class at Edgewood Elementary School.

“First, please put your hands behind your back and don’t touch the magazines,” Berkin ordered as he passed out the latest edition of Time for Kids.

Berkin, who is education editor for this simplified version of Time magazine, had come to see how well the publication was working in a classroom. But instead of simply asking the class to open the magazine, he made them wait. Hold off, please, he said. No peeking, now.

Some of the 10-year-olds began to wiggle as the colorful eight-page glossy slid onto their desks. One boy tried to turn the cover page with his nose. Finally Berkin allowed them to open the magazine and read--a command that brought on a noisy rustle of pages and the kind of excitement about a news publication that is almost unheard of in the adult world.

“I love this,” one youth would tell Berkin a few minutes later. “When I’m reading it, it feels like you’re grown up and you’re reading a magazine like your parents.”

Such talk helps fuel a small group of editors and writers in Time’s Manhattan headquarters. Like their colleagues at an increasing number of news organizations, they are determined to create a new generation of news consumers from the ground up.

Executives in the magazine, newspaper and even television industry have seen frightening evidence that young people are just saying no to the news habit. Moreover, as they age, they appear to be getting their news on the run, rarely carving out time to read a magazine or a newspaper. If reading news periodicals is not a habit by early adulthood, it probably never will be.

Thus, some of the biggest news conglomerates are trying to train their consumers early to recognize the importance of knowing what is going on.

The Newspaper Assn. of America, the organization that represents most of the major newspapers in the country, for example, has launched a $5.7-million advertising campaign focused on persuading parents to get their children to read the newspaper.

“Encourage your children to read a newspaper every day,” the ad says. The promotion features former Presidents Bush and Carter and MTV reporter Tabitha Soren, among others.

Denver Broncos quarterback John Elway is pictured reading a sports section in an advertisement that says: “It will make them stars in the most important game of all--the game of life.” And LL Cool J is pictured with the line: “Read a newspaper with your kids every day and just watch them get rapped up in their future.”

Similarly, many newspapers have expanded their relationships with their local schools. A few have put out special editions for schools. The Wall Street Journal publishes its own high school edition with emphasis on stories about how to get jobs, make money and get a good education.

The Journal’s classroom edition editor, Melinda Patterson Grenier, makes it clear that the newspaper has not simplified the news stories for students, as Time for Kids has done. “Sometimes we have to cut the articles to make them fit our space,” she said, “but we never ‘dumb’ them down.”

The issue of simplifying the news also arises at Newsweek, where editors have been intensely watching Time for Kids. Newsweek and U.S. News & World Report both offer magazines at a cut rate for schools with older students, but Deb Parker, circulation manager for the education programs at Newsweek, discounted the value of reaching down into the early grades with kid-news. “What we want is to use news in a real and natural way. Teachers don’t want to give the students something that’s dumbed down,” she said.

Most adults, of course, remember digesting simplified news in the form of a Weekly Reader or Scholastic News--two news products that still dominate classrooms across the country.

Time for Kids, first published in 1995 for grades four through six, is different in that it is produced primarily by journalists, not educators, and tends to be more colorful and up to date. A second edition for grades two and three was launched this school year. Circulation for the two editions is about 1.7 million, but Time for Kids is still not profitable, Time says.

Open for debate is whether Time’s jazzy, colorful graphics help children read or simply distract them. A recent Time for Kids feature on 20th Century Fox’s new movie, “Anastasia,” drew criticism from some educators for being just another commercial appeal to kids who are already bombarded with such information.

But David Goddy, Scholastic News editor in chief, says Time’s appearance has expanded the market for newsmagazines in schools. Such an expansion may be crucial, Goddy believes, because “one of the things we see now is that more and more kids are coming into school with less language skills . . . with less and less printed material in their homes.”