Reading the press in paper form is what Kelsey Russell, a 23-year-old American, has been doing since this summer. She films her press reviews and posts them on TikTok to encourage young people to take an interest in current affairs.
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A young 23-year-old American, Kelsey Russell, is a hit on TikTok, just by reading the newspaper. And not just any: the New York Times. In refined videos – without dancing, without music, without editing – and on themes that are not always very sexy. Armed with a highlighter, Kelsey Russell summarizes articles for her 70,000 subscribers on gun control, the American debt, or her country’s policy towards Ecuador. “Not very cool, by the way, this policy, brother”, said the young tiktoker.
Sincere, simple and effective comments. Result: tens of thousands, up to a million views for his videos. Figures that would make many media outlets green with envy. Moreover, the newspaper invited her to visit its offices. Now it is the Washington Post who sends her her editions free of charge and many journalists thank her in comments.
Objective: give generation Z a taste for reading the newspaper again
In one of her videos, Kelsey Russell explains what motivated her to read the newspaper to her generation on TikTok: “reading the newspaper is a bit like reading gossip, and our generation loves gossip”. But above all, according to her, young people are constantly overstimulated by screens, social networks, series to the point of forgetting even their most vital needs: eating, sleeping. A situation of dependence on screens of which “large structures, laws, governments are partly responsible”.
She therefore calls on her generation to be responsible for their choices, by taking an interest in current events, to better take part in them. And his recipe seems to work according to the numerous comments from young people claiming on his TikTok account to have subscribed to the New York Times thanks to her.