The Generation That Was Supposed to Save Journalism Isn't Who You Think
Gen Z was supposed to be journalism's natural constituency. New data shows they're fracturing along lines that most newsrooms never planned for—and the language we use is part of the problem.
I was recently talking with a relative about my work at the American Press Institute. As I described what I do around impact and trust, his face tightened. The corners of his mouth pulled down. The more I explained, the more I could see that he was hearing something different than what I meant.
To him, impact sounded like liberalism. Truth to power. Activism. Black Lives Matter.
I realized that even though I wasn’t finished, I’d already lost him.
I wasn’t surprised to hear someone in their fifties write off legacy media or question the word impact. What did surprise me was learning that an even younger generation—Generation Z—is turning more conservative than the ones before it.
That shift matters. Especially for the emerging news organizations that are counting on Gen Z to be their most natural supporters.
Why is Gen Z Becoming More Conservative?
For years, Gen Z has been treated as journalism’s great hope. The generation raised on activism, diversity, and climate awareness. The one that would finally build a bridge between news and purpose.
That story sounded good. It still does. But it’s not the full picture.
Industry research has echoed that optimism. One publication put it this way: Gen Z “will play an important role for news producers over the long term” and is “the younger target group” that media can’t afford to neglect if they want long-term sustainability.
But the ground is shifting beneath that assumption.
Even Jake Tapper has noticed it. In a recent interview, he said, “I think Gen Z’s going to be a lot more conservative,” pointing to how his own kids have grown skeptical of movements like Black Lives Matter and #MeToo after watching what they saw as promises that never materialized.
He’s not alone. A 2025 Yale poll found that 18-to-21-year-olds now lean Republican by nearly 12 points—a remarkable reversal from recent years. Harvard Kennedy School research shows Trump won more young voters in 2024 than any Republican presidential candidate since 2008. And the gender divide is real: young women remain largely progressive, but young men are moving sharply in the opposite direction.
Why? Some of it is frustration with the economy. Some of it is backlash against online moralizing and what younger voters see as performative progressivism that doesn’t deliver. Some of it is the rise of influencers who sell independence as rebellion.
The point is, the curve many of us assumed was bending one way might be bending another. And if you’re building a news organization on the assumption that Gen Z shares your worldview, you’re building on sand.
The Language Problem: Why “Impact” and “Equity” Can Alienate
New and mission-driven news organizations tend to lean on familiar words. Impact. Justice. Equity. Community. They sound right. They sound like purpose. They sound like what funders want to hear.
But to a lot of younger people—especially those who aren’t already aligned—those words come with baggage. They’ve stopped feeling like values and started sounding like labels.
Take a typical mission statement: “We hold power accountable and center the voices of marginalized communities.” To a politically neutral Gen Z reader, “holding power accountable” might not picture corruption or government overreach. They might picture you holding their beliefs accountable. Their community. Their side. And “centering voices” sounds less like journalism and more like advocacy.
Compare that to: “We report on how decisions get made and who’s affected by them.” Same goal. Different signal. One invites scrutiny. The other invites suspicion.
That doesn’t mean those values are wrong. It just means the words may not land the way we think they do. Journalism can still serve the public without preaching to it. It can focus on fairness and accountability without trying to sound virtuous. The goal isn’t to water anything down. It’s to make sure the message connects.
What’s Really at Stake: Miscalculating the Fractured Gen Z Audience
Here’s what keeps me up at night: many emerging newsrooms aren’t just miscalculating their audience. They’re miscalculating which audience they need.
If you only resonate with one slice of Gen Z—the slice that already agrees with you—you’re not building for sustainability. You’re building an echo chamber with a donation button.
And here’s the harder truth: if young men are shifting right while young women are shifting left, your audience isn’t just divided by ideology. It’s fracturing by identity. A newsroom that speaks fluently to one half might sound like a foreign language to the other.
That’s not a call to false balance or “both sides” journalism. It’s a call to recognize that credibility increasingly depends on whether you’re willing to challenge power wherever it sits—not just where it’s comfortable to look.
Three Ways Newsrooms Can Rebuild Trust with a Fractured Gen z
1. Assuming alignment where none exists
Gen Z isn’t one audience. They’re fractured, skeptical, and raised on a thousand competing narratives. If you assume they share your worldview, you’ll lose them before you begin. Test your framing with people who don’t already agree with you. Their confusion is your early warning system.
2. Confusing mission with brand
Your internal mission can be as values-driven as you want. But your public-facing brand needs to do something harder: invite people in who don’t yet trust you. That means rethinking how you describe your work. Does “impact journalism” sound neutral, or does it sound like activism with a press pass? The difference matters.
3. Relying on declarations instead of demonstrations
Gen Z doesn’t want to be told your work is fair. They want to see how it’s done. Show your sourcing. Your editing. Your decisions. Transparency feels more honest than declarations of balance. And if your accountability journalism only runs in one direction, the audience will notice—and draw their own conclusions about your credibility.
The Takeaway
My relative wasn’t wrong to be skeptical. He just reacted to a vocabulary that didn’t sound like it included him.
That’s the quiet risk facing the next generation of journalism.
Many in Gen Z still care about truth, fairness, and accountability. They just don’t believe those things automatically belong to one side. If emerging news organizations want to reach them, they’ll need to bridge that gap—not by shouting the mission louder, but by proving it quietly, consistently, and to everyone.
The audience you’re counting on to save journalism might still care deeply about what’s true.
They just might not care for the way we’re talking about it.
That conversation with my relative keeps coming back to me.
Not because he was wrong to be skeptical, but because I realized how many people might be having the same reaction—and we’d never know it. They just wouldn’t engage with the work. Wouldn’t donate. Wouldn’t share. Wouldn’t trust it.
If you’re building something that depends on reaching people who don’t already agree with you, this is worth testing. Not just in focus groups, but in actual conversations with actual people who fall outside your usual circles.
What are you hearing? What language is landing—and what’s causing people to tune out before you’ve even started?
Let me know in the comments. And if this is sparking something for you, share it with someone else trying to build sustainable news. We need these conversations now, while there’s still time to course-correct.
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Greenbaum raises an invaluable pont about language alienating Gen Z audiences. The Jake Tapper observation about his kids questioning BLM and MeToo actually illustrates your argument perfectly. Gen Z seems to want transparency over declarations, and they're suspcious of vocabulary that feels preachey. I think the framing shift from "impact" to "reporting on how decisions affect people" is really powrful because it removes the moral dimension and invites scrutiny instead of suspicion.