Journalism is starting to be “sexy again” — and papers everywhere have this Gen Zer to thank.
Columbia grad student Kelsey Russell is on a mission to be more media literate — and she’s taking her 89,000 TikTok followers on the journey with her.
The sociology student got a subscription to the Sunday edition of the New York Times for her recent 23rd birthday and suddenly realized she didn’t know how to respond when current events came up.
“I was entering conversations — whether it be with friends, dates, even just my colleagues and parents — where topics of war or topics of climate change, all these things would come up and I didn’t feel like I even had enough information to ask questions or be curious about it,” Russell told The Post Friday.
The sociology student vows to make the ever-changing — and often described as “dying — newspaper industry “sexy again.”
“If you want young people to care about journalism, you have to make it an appetizing career for them.”
Part of her journalism glow-up is creating a community where she teaches her fellow Gen Zers to become media knowledgable in a world plagued with an abundance of unreliable sources — including on her preferred social platform — and to break down the distrust between reader and writer.
“Somebody who goes to the doctor is going to know exactly what to do, right? They’re gonna know how to pull out the insurance card, they’re gonna know what questions to ask the doctor,” she reasoned. “Somebody who doesn’t is going to be so nervous about the whole process. They’re probably gonna be less trusting and not know what to ask a doctor, what is appropriate.”
She compared the scenario to her peers, who have grown up with the internet and endless access to information online. In recent years, so-called citizen journalists and content creators — not real reporters — have been delivering news to Gen Z consumers.
“Young people do not have as much faith and trust in journalists, but I think it’s because they have a lack of experience of a world where the majority of their information is coming from journalists, which leads to young people not understanding the training and skills and also the bandwidth that it actually takes to be a journalist,” she said.
“So, I just think there’s a whole disconnect because there’s a lack of experience with the journalist.”
Russell is trying to fix that by highlighting journalists’ work and mentioning them by name, explaining their work and breaking down the bones of each article she shares online. She enjoys seeing what sources the journalist uses, from experts and professors to witnesses to bring the story together.
And she’ll humbly admit that she was “absolutely not” media literate when she first started, but her honesty and bubbly personality are teaching her 89,200 followers that part of the process is trying to understand what you don’t know and shaking off the “shame” of ignorance.
“It’s important to let people know we have to try,” she said. “We have to get a little bit outside of our comfort zones, and that usually starts with reading something that you might not be as comfortable with.
“So that’s my biggest tip — to dip your toe outside of your comfort zone.”
She confessed in a September post that she had to Google a lot of terms in one of the Wall Street Journal’s articles, telling her fans that’s “OK.”
“Yes, this is a newspaper that is financially and economically focused, and it’s OK if you don’t have a finance and economic background,” she told her followers.
“I’m going to do a lot of explaining and I had to look up a lot of these terms, too.”
Russell has never feared learning and came from an educationally fueled family. She recalled her dad sending her newspaper clippings that reminded him of her in college — although she never read them, she now does the same to her friends — and the way he would bring up things he learned in the paper.
She even read sections of the paper every day before school from second to seventh grade and is happy to be back in that same practice — and thinks media literacy should be taught to youngsters.
“As soon as students can read, we ought to be teaching them what they are reading, why they’re reading it, which is what good language arts and English [classes] are for.”
She recommends picking up a physical paper to avoid distractions — and also to help fund journalism and journalists through subscriptions — and says that “print media is a vehicle for promoting natural curiosity.”
Her pleas seem to work — several followers said they recently subscribed to a newspaper or are keeping up with the news because of her videos.
Plus, being informed of current events might even land you a date, as Russell learned (though she’s politely declined everyone who’s asked).
“It was very sweet, but…” she said with a laugh.
So, ditch the dating apps, buy a coffee and a print subscription to your favorite paper (you know it’s The Post!), and maybe you’ll find yourself a well-read date to discuss the news with.
What’s sexier than that?
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