Thinking Young, Very Young

By: Mark Fitzgerald U.S. publishers desperately looking for ways to attract young readers may want to turn their attention south ? way south, to Bolivia. Mi Super Diario (translation: "My Super Daily Paper") is a standalone daily designed for 7- to 11-year-olds that is published by Carlos Echeverry, a newspaper industry consultant who runs a company called The Idea Machine. In its three years, Mi Super Diario has tripled its circulation to 12,000 and proven a big hit with grammar school kids in Cochabamba, Bolivia's third-largest city.

The colorful newspaper runs just four pages because, Echeverry explains, even kids are time-pressed these days: "They only have so much time between classes."

Though it's brief, about 80% of the content is hard news and current events. "Only two items we don't touch: religion and sex," he says. "Everything else we cover: economy, politics, ecology, whatever is hard news for a kid in Bolivia."

A staff of five journalists creates the newspaper, working out of a building that looks like the explosion of color and graphics that makes up a typical Mi Super Diario page. It is sold directly to schools, which pass the low price on to parents through tuition or fees. Single copies sold in supermarkets account for 8% to 10% of its circulation.

But Mi Super Diario is essentially an advertiser-supported newspaper ? but it doesn't have any advertisements. Instead, four or five advertisers such as Burger King can place a single logo in the paper. Says Echeverry, "We don't [have] commercial ads because the newspapers are going to the schools, and the schools wouldn't like ads in the newspapers."

Copies are delivered before school starts at 10 a.m. In a decidedly Bolivian twist, the same buildings serve as private schools in the mornings, and public schools in the afternoon. "So the rich kids read the paper, and leave it for poor kids," Echeverry adds.

The paper is almost certainly growing newspaper readers for the future, says Michael P. Smith, executive director of the Media Management Center at Northwestern University: "Our research shows that the best readers today ? no matter what the country ? are the adults who had a newspaper in the school or in the home. That speaks clearly to the need to get newspapers into the hands of young people."

Mi Super Diario is the first kids' daily in Latin America, but the concept has already proven successful in France.

French publisher Play Bac Presse prints four "quotidien," or daily, newspapers for four age groups: Quoti for 5- and 6-year-olds; Le Petit Quotidien for ages 7 to 9; Mon Quotidien for ages 10 to 13; and L'Actu for teens 14 to 18. The papers, which have a combined circulation of about 200,000, are sold on a subscription basis and mailed to homes.

For five months last year, The Miami Herald tested the Play Bac concept in part of its market. Three age-specific papers ? Daily 7, Daily 10, and Daily 13 ? were inserted into home-delivered Heralds in Kendall Lakes, a community of about 14,000 households.

Mi Super Diario, too, is going international. This school year, it launched an edition in partnership with a paper in the northern Mexico city of Torreron. Echeverry expects to follow that with editions in Mexicali and Tijuana. Next year, the paper will launch in Panama and Ecuador. In all the new launches, Mi Super Diario will be co-branded with a daily newspaper. "I picked the name on purpose so that eventually I could have partnerships, like Mi Super Diario Tribune or Mi Super Diario Herald," Echeverry notes.

The youth paper takes a somewhat different approach than the Play Bac Presse ones, says the Media Management Center's Smith: "The Bolivian newspaper appears to be a little hipper, and at the same time it gives a little bit more information that teachers can use directly in school. Carlos is a newspaper guy who has a real commitment to literacy, and making sure young people have access to a newspaper."