Millennials - potential for great storytelling

You may have heard of Baby Boomers and Generation X but a new term has been coined for the group born in and after 1982 – the millennials. Millennials were discussed in a Saturday morning session at the EWA conference.

Speakers for the session were Susan May, who works with a consulting firm that handles higher education strategies and Ian Shapira of the Washington Post. Shapira is making the millennial generation a new beat at his paper. Both advise caution when referring to the term millennials. People born during that generation don’t easily fit into a category like the G.I. generation of World War II or the baby boomers.

Instead, someone from the millennial generation, or the post-X generation, doesn’t accept labels or generalizations well.

The term was coined by authors Neil Howe and William Strauss to describe a generation of people defined as special, sheltered, confident, team-oriented, pressured and achieving. While several positives have been strapped on the backs of millennials, Shapira asks journalists to look at the group in a different way. Because there are different subcultures in the group of millennials there’s a treasure trove of stories that haven’t been told.

Shapira said these stories won’t be a part of the big government exposés. Instead, the beat offers great feature stories. He said a journalist could have a real opportunity to “tap into a world where people who are very discreet in life.”

He used the Washington, D.C. young gay scene as an example. A group that believes older gay men are “too discriminatory, too white and too homogenous.”

“We never really write about these people,” Shapira said.

Shapira was higher education reporter for the Washington Post before starting the millennials beat.