I attended a career fair at Cripple Creek-Victor Junior/Senior High School recently.

Getting the interest of students is a tough job for a newspaper guy. Fewer and fewer young people read – or even care about – newspapers. They do care about social media influencers and content creators, though.

Knowing that, I presented as “Journalists: The original influencers and content creators.”

We journalists have a snobby view of our profession, often snubbing our noses at online influencers and content creators. But when examining what we do with what they do, there are remarkable similarities. That’s how I presented journalism to the students.

The first step is to determine what your content will be. I do news. Others might do silly dog videos. The content is very different, but any content is valid as long as steps two and three are also fulfilled.

The second step is to find your audience. That process is a dance with your content. An audience may or may not gravitate to your preferred content. If it doesn’t, you have to adjust the content to serve the audience. You are constantly trying to grow the audience, which means your content is always evolving.

This is where conventional journalists are struggling. Our job is to report facts. That really doesn’t evolve much.

More and more of our audience is seeking to have their viewpoints confirmed rather than challenged. That’s led to the rise of biased echo-chamber sources. They feed our ego by telling us over and over again how wise we are to hold the views that we hold. When scrutinized, though, many of those views crumble. We don’t have to face that scrutiny – and the subsequent challenge of our wisdom – if we stay in our echo-chamber. It’s a comfortable place to be but exposes us as fools.

The third step is to find someone who values access to your audience. That’s where the monetization comes in. Sponsorships, advertising and subscriptions allow journalists, influencers and content creators to do what they do. That money isn’t necessarily tied to the content you’re producing. It’s tied to them wanting to present their products or services to your audience.

So there it is. What I do is very similar to producing silly dog videos.

The real difference is what our audience seeks. Our audience wants to be informed about the news. They want us to report what’s happening with as little spin and bias as possible. Of course, we have a Voices section for opinion, and our audience expects us to allow all voices to be heard there – not just the ones with which we agree.

And regrettably, that audience is shrinking worldwide.

In order to serve that audience, that’s the content we produce. It’s demanding and labor-intensive. That’s why newspapers are struggling and one-sided, echo-chamber, political-operative podcasters are thriving. We report facts. They regurgitate the talking points of their ideology without bothering with real reporting.

Time to get off the soapbox. There are no soapboxes at a career fair. What you will find at a career fair is a renewed sense of optimism.

If the insular world of social media has given you a jaded view about today’s youth, spend a little time around our schools. You’ll meet some remarkable young people and feel much better about the future of our society. These kids were smart, engaged and open-minded.

Meeting them makes me hopeful enough to enjoy some silly dog videos.