This week’s How to Cover Money episode discusses reporting on millennials and their financial behavior. Graduate assistant and student of the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication Rian Bosse, a millennial himself, joins co-hosts Micki Maynard and Mark Remillard to discuss the themes he has come across while reporting on millennials.
Transcript
[Intro Music]
Micki Maynard: How to Cover Money: Tips from Top Journalists.
Mark Remillard: Today on How to Cover Money, a look at millennials and money.
Rian Bosse: Millennials are not that different from a lot of other generations, and we’re not kind of aliens from another planet. We approach money in a sensible way.
Maynard: Hello and welcome to the Reynolds Center podcast. We’re coming to you from the Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism. We’re based at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University. I’m Micki Maynard, Director of the Reynolds Center, and with me is our co-host, Mark Remillard. He’s a Cronkite alum and a reporter and anchor at KTAR News. Hello Mark!
Remillard: Hi Micki. Today we bring you Series 2, Episode 3 of How to Cover Money. We have a very special guest with us today in the studio. Why don’t you introduce him, Micki.
Maynard: Yes, I’m very pleased to introduce Rian Bosse, who’s a graduate student at the Cronkite school and a graduate assistant with the Reynolds Center. He’s the creator of our column called “Millennials and Money.” You can see all of Rian’s stories on our website, businessjournalism.org. Rian, thanks for joining us.
Bosse: Happy to be here.
Maynard: Why don’t you give our listeners a little background about yourself and then tell us how you came up with the idea for “Millennials and Money.”
Bosse: Alright, well, I graduated college in 2012 and I started working at my hometown paper, daily paper in Fergus Falls, Minnesota: the Fergus Falls Daily Journal, where I covered everything from sports to local businesses to education. And then about two years of doing that, I came, after about two years of doing that, I came to Cronkite school to study journalism a little more in depth. We came up with the idea for “Millennials and Money” just kind of kicking around story ideas. You were part of them at the Reynolds Center. And we, I really have this interest in in millennials, because I am one, and it just kind of came about thinking about millennial issues, whether they’re social, they involve money, things like that. And we kind of just decided to attach millennials with money and see what kind of stories came about.
Maynard: And just so that our listeners understand, we’re talking about people who were born when?
Bosse: The exact definition kind of goes around a little bit, but generally millennials are considered people who were born after 1980.
Remillard: So tell us some of the basic things that people should know about the millennial generation. I’m one of them, too. And the way that we think about money.
Bosse: Some of the basics with “Millennials and Money” is, you know, millennials are not that different from a lot of other generations, and we’re not kind of aliens from another planet. We approach money, I think, sensibly, and really, with a kind of a sensible, in a sensible way. So there’s been a lot of kind of outside influences, like millennials entering the job market, when, during a recession, after a recession, taking on a lot of student loans. So millennials aren’t making a lot of large purchases right now. They’re not maybe buying cars, maybe not buying houses as much as other generations in the past, and they’re really buying more into personal items like mobile devices and things like that. Because, one, they’re interested in them. I think the millennial generations grew up with technology, and they’re very interested in things like iPhones and iPads and stuff like that. But they also help with starting up businesses, which is something I like to do. It helps them express themselves creatively. It helps them create podcasts and stuff like that.
Remillard: Did what you were looking at here involve the fact that millennials are so interested in moving into urban areas too? The fact that, like, does that play a role in this that we’re not buying houses, we’re not buying cars because we want to live, a lot of millennials are moving into these urban areas where we don’t have to have cars? We are renting apartments rather than buying homes? Did you come across anything like that?
Bosse: Yeah, definitely, there’s been a lot of reports out there that millennials are looking to live the kind of the city lifestyle, and they want to live it affordably. I think that’s another important point. A lot of lot of them are moving to interesting places like Buffalo and Cleveland and Detroit and kind of revitalizing these areas. Not just because they’re cheap either, but because they can get that that city lifestyle, but they can also have careers, dedicated careers, and kind of creative outlets that help revitalize cities that kind of have that opportunity to cultivate neat cultural aspects in their businesses and in their cities.
Maynard: So one of the areas that you’ve written a lot for businessjournalism.org is the whole issue of student loans. And apparently, there’s now more student loan debt in this country than there is credit card debt, and it’s a big overhang for the millennial generation and even for older folks. I think that the Obama’s just paid off their student loans a few years ago. So you have some great stories on our website. One was about the Corinthian Colleges students, and the other one was about something that’s going on at Stanford. So I wondered if you could first talk about Corinthian and then tell us about what’s happening at Stanford.
Bosse: Well, the Corinthian Colleges is for profit company that was accused of using kind of predatory business practices on getting students to take out loans, federally-subsidized loans, to go to school, and maybe not offering the best education, not getting them in positions to where they can, their degrees are worthwhile. And a group called “The Corinthian 15” decided that they were not going to pay back their student loans because they felt that they were misled in their education. And it kind of sparked this larger conversation, because student loan debt has reached over a trillion dollars in the United States, it kind of started this wider conversation about that had been going on for a little bit, but kind of now put a bigger face on it. The Corinthian 15 kind of sparked this conversation about, you know, is it going to be too much of a burden for this generation, millennials? There’s been a lot of a lot of people looking at what millennials can and can’t do because they have so much student loan debt coming out of college. And I think this group kind of said, “Hey, we don’t think this is fair. We were misled in our in our education, but as a wider generation, this is really unfair, and it’s going to be stifling to this generation as they move forward.”
And then with Stanford, the story I did on Stanford was kind of looking at this trend of free tuition for middle class students who go to elite universities. I think Bloomberg had a list of 10 elite universities that offer free tuition, and in some cases free room and board and tuition for students who are middle class. So they might not get enough money in financial aid because their parents make too much money, but they’re by no means very wealthy, so they still take on a huge burden when they take out student loans. So colleges like Stanford just set marks where they offer free education to middle class students if their parents make less than $100,000 but Stanford recently increased that to $125,000 and really what it what it’s saying is, is that it’s kind of indicating this, this trend to take off, kind of this burden that’s being put on this generation. Because really, in the future, it could be very stifling. When there’s over a trillion dollars, there’s people stuff to pay off a trillion dollars in student loan debt that could be really stifling to a generation that wants to open businesses, that wants to buy houses eventually, that want to buy cars, eventually want to buy things, go on vacation. That could be very stifling in the future.
Remillard: You did a lot of stories on our series of stories on millennial entrepreneurs and how they’re using their passions to start businesses. What are some of those people that you’ve come across in some of your stories on that series?
Bosse: We highlighted these real, two interesting, three interesting people. The first was a self proclaimed yo-yo man. It was he was very fun to talk to, but his his job, his career, has been around yo-yos. He has been on Letterman stupid tricks, doing funny tricks, you know, on national television. But he’s a speaker, a motivational speaker, a keynote speaker, and he really talks about failure and how important that is, whether it’s in a business, whether it’s in life, because obviously playing with yo-yos, not just playing with yo-yos, making a career out of yo-yos. There’s a lot of ups and downs. Sorry about the pun, but there’s a lot of ups and downs, and there’s going to be some failure. And he kind of created this career around this passion that he had. The second was kind of a Q and A with this local couple who started their own theater here in Glendale, Arizona. And they started their own theater after they after they graduated from Northern Arizona University, and really it was very interesting, because they were kind of branching out to attract their own generation. They’re trying to attract millennials. They’re trying to attract young people, not only just to come and watch, but to be involved and to act and create opportunities for people who wanted to be like them and continue in their passion. So they did this, these cool things like, one of the things that sticks out is they created, like a theater Netflix, where you could buy a subscription, monthly subscription, and come see any play you wanted as many times in a month. So really, they were kind of taking this passion and being innovative in really a way I think that highlights kind of the uniqueness of this generation.
Maynard: So one of the other things that you wrote about was Etsy, the Etsy IPO, which, so for anyone who doesn’t know what Etsy is, it’s a marketplace where people sell handmade crafts. They sell vintage things, they sell, you know, what I would call found objects that they buy at garage sales and clean up or whatever. But Etsy is one of those things that’s really attracted a lot of millennial sellers. So you wrote about the IPO.
Bosse: Yeah, and really, the IPO and the amount that they were looking for going public, really kind of just showed how there are these marketplaces popping up across the country. Etsy allows young people, it allows everyone, but really a lot of young people, to get creative and to sell creative items in a large market. A lot of people go on there and create some really interesting and cool things. And whether you’re a painter or craftsman or something like that. You can go on there and really sell some neat items. But I’ve seen a lot of other types of these services pop up, whether they’re kind of related, like Uber or there’s some delivery services where if you have a bike and you’re young and you want to deliver fast food to people who don’t want to leave their house, then you can do that. And it’s a great way to make some money on the side. And I think it’s really kind of indicative, like I said before, to this generation, where they’re willing to do stuff that’s creative, they’re willing to work hard if it means picking up a little extra cash here or there.
Maynard: I’m gonna bet that there are a lot of older reporters listening to our podcast. I mean older than 25 that have no idea how to get started doing stories about millennials, and yet their editors, both broadcast and print, are very interested in covering the millennial generation. So if you were talking to like a reporter who was in their late 30s or early 40s, what would you tell them? How would you get started covering the millennial generation?
Bosse: Well, I can’t emphasize this enough that we are not that strange of a generation. We have, you know, it doesn’t matter how old you are, we probably have a lot more in common than you would think. And so I don’t think that. I think that’s the first thing people have to get over, is that there’s no secret code to figuring us out. There’s no, you don’t have to listen through an iPhone or anything like that. There’s, there’s nothing really that’s that challenging of us. We want to, you know, we want to follow our dreams, we want to do things, we want to start businesses. We want to be creative in our careers. We want to be passionate about our careers. So I think that’s the first thing to get over, is that we’re really not that strange. But I think one thing to really help people cover millennials and money is, is to go out and look, even if you’re in a small town like I was as a reporter, you’re going to find millennials starting businesses, starting side career, you know, side businesses and side careers. Millennials aren’t just being entrepreneurs by starting Twitter or Facebook, they’re all over the place. When I was a reporter, I covered a small business that was started by a church youth group 18 to 20 year olds who wanted to create their own cafe and have a cool place to hang out in town. And so they got funding from their church group, and they started their own coffee shop. They enjoyed making coffee, and they enjoyed having, you know, a nice place to congregate. They’re everywhere. Millennials are everywhere, and they’re doing really interesting things in the business world, to really express themselves, to express their passions, but to make careers out of it. So really, I think the biggest thing too, is to realize that millennials are everywhere. They’re making money everywhere, and they’re really making these new, exciting businesses in every part of the country.
Remillard: You’re one of the writers of Must Read Money stories, which the Reynolds Center sends out every day. Tell us about that a little bit, and what you do.
Bosse: Well, what we do with those stories is find four every weekday, find four really important stories that are maybe not just important, but interesting, money stories that really people should be reading about, and kind of give an in-depth look into money. I don’t have a specific focus with millennials when I write the stories, but they always seem to be coming up. There always seem to be millennial stories that we can work into those stories about young entrepreneurs, stories about kind of, maybe quirky businesses that are popping up because younger people are starting them. So I think there’s with that, it’s a really interesting way to get story ideas that aren’t just necessarily your go cover, you know, go cover the the big company across the street, or go cover the big energy, the big power plant or anything like that. They’re maybe not traditional money stories, but they’re interesting, and they have a lot to do with money.
Maynard: So if you’d like to get Must Read Money stories in your inbox every day. You can sign up for our newsletter at businessjournalism.org. Thanks for joining us, Rian.
Bosse: Thank you for having me.
Remillard: That’s it for this episode of How to Cover Money. In the next two episodes, we’ll be talking with one of the best known tech journalists in the country, Dan Gilmore.
Maynard: Support for How to Cover Money comes from the Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism. Visit our website businessjournalism.org, sign up for our daily newsletter, Must Read Money stories and see all of our features on our website. For Mark Remillard, I’m Micki Maynard. Now, start thinking like a business reporter.
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