Free News Subscriptions Boost Teen Readership and Media Literacy in France
Making Teenagers Read Newspapers. A Nationwide Experiment in French High Schools
A nationwide randomized trial in 243 French high schools (9,628 students) tested two interventions: free digital subscriptions to a major national newspaper and teacher-led media education modules. The free subscription led to large, persistent increases in news consumption (0.49–0.60 SD) and an 8 percentage point rise in paid subscriptions nearly a year later. Students in deprived schools gained the most in news knowledge (0.20–0.31 SD), cutting information inequality by 45–70%. Both interventions improved media literacy, with stronger effects when teachers had prior media education experience.
We document a very large uptake of the free subscription, which translates into persistent and large increases in news consumption (+0.49 to 0.60 sd) and demand for future news, including an 8pp increase in paid subscriptions nearly a year after the intervention.
- SoftTalker
Major newspapers and even local ones (if they still exist) have been so dumbed down in the past few decades. I would estimate that many are now written to target a less-than-high-school literacy level. Worse, news often seems to be written to elicit outrage or fear (probably because "engagement").
- vinni2
I remember in my school days each day one student was responsible for summarising headlines from the newspapers in the school assembly to encourage us to read newspapers.
- bityard
Ha. Not knowing any better, I took a class in high school that turned out to be actually reading the daily newspaper and writing a one-page report _every single day_ about international issues that literally never impacted our day-to-day lives in rural Podunk, USA.
It was the most boring and soul-crushing class I've ever taken in my life. After that remote learning course about Quality Assurance in college, of course.
- jll29
In Europe, The Economist and The Guardian are about the only serious in-depth sources left, at least for those that can read English.
- throwitaway222
We need more things like Ground news.
We're either propagandized by reading the news or watching it on TV OR we're holed up in a confirmation biased world by social media (which is also propagandized).