Our society often forgets to involve youth as an equal voice in our discussions about how our world ought to function. Young minds are our future artists, entrepreneurs, and legislators, and they need to learn to care about what’s going on in the world today so they can further our work tomorrow. News today generally doesn’t aim for younger audiences, a problem we need to fix if we want them to become interested and active adults.
This is a problem that 18-year-old, self-made journalist, Olivia Seltzer addressed by creating her Gen-Z-focused news site, The Cramm.
Informing young minds
During and after the 2016 election, Olivia Seltzer felt that, like many in her age group, she didn’t have historical context for many of the changes happening in the US. She was born at a time just after many changes in our country and felt she didn’t have a background understanding of ongoing issues, like why we were at war in Afghanistan. She used the money from her 13th birthday to buy the domain name “The Cramm.”
Seltzer did her own research and broke down the daily headlines from the news into smaller, easy-to-read bits she sent out in a daily newsletter. This was aimed at her Gen Z peers, those who were born between the mid-to-late 90s up to the early 2010s, who needed a news source of their own, to keep them informed on the news and to provide context.
“Simply put, you can’t change the world unless you know about it,” Seltzer said to the Los Angeles Daily News. “It sounds so basic, but it’s very true. If you don’t know about something happening in the world, you don’t have the power or the tools you need to try to make the world a better place and I think it’s really important for a generation as motivated and as activism oriented as my generation to be informed about the issues we’re facing.”
The Cramm now has over 2.5 million subscribers, in 113 countries across 6 continents. Olivia Seltzer’s first book was published on February 15. “Cramm This Book: So You Know WTF is Going On in the World Today” is an in-depth dive into the important news topics of today, giving readers of every age background info and context to better understand the history of what’s going on.
