Keeping the Kids in Line

By: Lucia Moses While newspapers struggle one by one to figure out how to make readers out of young people, The Associated Press is considering a service that would let members create stand-alone editions for kids -- if they can overcome the many logistical issues.

Some editors who have been shown the concept gave favorable reviews. "It's one of the few things we've seen that answers the hugely important question of what we do to reach younger readers," said Anders Gyllenhaal, editor of the Star Tribune in Minneapolis.

AP hopes to launch a pilot program by this fall and the full service in the fall of next year. It's seeking a commitment from 10 to 15 newspapers to help with the market research.

Borrowing from a French series of child-oriented newspapers, AP envisions creating four weekday tabloid editions serving kids ages 5 to 7, 8 to 10, 11 to 13, and 14 to 16.

AP members could make the junior editions available only to subscribers with children or deliver them to schools as part of Newspaper In Education programs. They would be designed so that members could custom-brand them and add local advertising and editorial content.

The service could cost roughly $1,000 per edition per week, with small papers paying less, said Jim Kennedy, AP's director of strategic planning, who unveiled the concept and prototypes to the full AP membership during the Newspaper Association of America's annual convention in Seattle last month.

Production and marketing could get tricky, however. Members would have to drum up ad or sponsorship dollars to defray the cost. If AP leaves the printing to the members, they would need the ability to print the all-color sections. Finally, they would have to deliver four separate sections to individual households, a major obstacle for all but the most sophisticated operations.

Challenges aside, fans of the concept view it as a way not only to make newspaper-reading a daily habit for children but also to help drive home-delivery revenue by tying the kids' editions to their parents' subscriptions.

"Most important I think for us is that it becomes an incentive to keep subscribing for a long time," said Tom Fiedler, executive editor of The Miami Herald. At a cost of about $200,000 a year to the Herald, the proposed service would be cheaper for it than creating the editions in-house, Fiedler said.

AP's inspiration and collaborator is Paris-based Play Bac Presse, which publishes a set of mail-delivered, weekday dailies with a combined circulation of 200,000. Designed to be read in 10 minutes, the papers are heavy on color and graphics, and involve readers in the story selection, writing, and evaluation process. Kids "want to be taken seriously," said Editor Francois Dufour, who is a consultant for AP. "At the same time, they don't want the serious paper."

The service's final form is yet to be determined. AP may go with a weekly print product or a Web model if it finds a daily print product is infeasible.

Retired Gannett Co. Inc. Chairman and CEO Allen H. Neuharth tried to get newspaper publishers to fund a similar proposal last year, but abandoned it shortly afterward, citing the poor economic climate. At least AP won't have that problem -- it's planning to fund the research and development itself.