The canton of Vaud is launching “Chek”, an innovative pilot project to raise awareness among young Vaudois of the importance of consulting verified journalistic information. Independent and powered by local publishers, the digital platform aims to offer local, dynamic and positive news on the channels used by 17-25 year olds.
The aim is to encourage young people to become informed through reliable and verified journalistic content dealing with issues in public life, as well as to highlight the key role they can play in society, underlines the canton of Vaud on Thursday in a press release. To achieve this, “Chek”’s mission is to interest 17-25 year olds in local news by offering them attractive and relevant content.
This digital project is accessible from Thursday on the most popular platforms with the target audience, such as Instagram, TikTok, and Mastodon – alternative to X (formerly Twitter excluding GAFAM) -, ensuring wide and inclusive distribution.
Editorial independence
To supply “Chek”, the State called on local press publishers to produce journalistic content in video format and adapted to young people. The contributions of these media will be remunerated through service mandates, thus guaranteeing their total editorial independence vis-à-vis the State, which also withdraws from the editorial coordination of the project.
Chek will thus allow local newspapers to reach a young audience, often difficult to reach through traditional channels, and try to retain them for their titles. Publishers will also benefit from support in their digital transition, adapting to new communication formats. They will have the opportunity to create links with their printed edition, thus promoting complementarity between digital and paper.
Six media to get started
The project starts with six media: The side, The Mailthe Journal of Morgesthe Tempsthe Vallée de Joux Notice Sheet and Rivieria Chablais Hebdo. Others will join this project in the coming weeks which will ultimately bring together all the members of Vaud Presse.
The result of a broad and regular consultation of the target audience, the identity and concept of “Chek” are based on the results of the 2022 Qualinsight agency study on the relationship of young people to voting and information. It revealed that young people are not willing to pay for access to information and get their information differently from previous generations, mainly through social media. Chek was designed to meet this reality.
“The budget allocated to the measure dedicated to youth information amounts to 1.45 million,” declared Yoann Goy, head of the media diversity assistance project at Keystone-ATS. This amount represents approximately a quarter of the resources allocated by the Grand Council in 2021 for measures to support media diversity (6.2 million) over a period of five years, until the end of 2026.
More information on www.chek-media.ch
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