Young Adult Market:
Evolution of Young Publications
Elusive, busy, fickle. Editors of Chicago Tribune’s Red Eye, The Louisville (Ky.) Courier-Journal’s Velocity Weekly and The Quad-City Times’ Your Mom used those words to describe high school and college students and young professionals – the holy grail of readers for newspapers.
Newspapers have launched dozens of publications in the past decade to reach these readers and increase advertising. Some have thrived, others have folded.
In this series of case studies, we looked at how these publications evolved over time in mission, content and structure. We asked the publication’s editors how they define success and what lessons they have learned.
NAA featured Your Mom in Teenpager: Ten Strategies Targeting Teens (2004) just months after the publication launched. The weekly publication geared at high school students folded in 2006. Editors cited low pick-up rates and disinterest from advertisers among other challenges. In the case study presented here, we returned to former editors to ask for lessons they learned during the publication’s run in the market.