The Palmerston North Herald has unveiled an ambitious new strategy to deliberately anger university students, after editors concluded that the publication’s Facebook comments were becoming dangerously dominated by people old enough to remember when The Plaza was called the Downtown Shopping Centre.
Under the new audience diversification programme, the Herald will begin publishing carefully engineered material designed to irritate students, encourage furious reposts and bring the average age of its comment section below 54.
Editors say the move became necessary after months of comments from readers accusing openly satirical articles of being “bullshit,” “fake news” and “what is wrong with journalism today,” often directly beneath labels identifying the publication as satire.
“At the moment, our average commenter appears to be a semi-retired homeowner with a profile picture taken inside a parked vehicle,” a Herald spokesperson said. “They read an article about the Mayor being trapped inside a sousaphone and immediately demand that the council launch an investigation.”
“We need younger people in there. Not necessarily smarter people, just people who can type an angry response without accidentally posting it three times.”
The Herald considered several ways of attracting a younger audience, including producing meaningful local journalism, posting short-form videos and learning what Discord is. All were rejected for being either too expensive or requiring actual effort.
Instead, the publication decided the easiest option would be to provoke university students, who researchers found are capable of transforming a mildly irritating opinion into a 97-comment argument before their first lecture of the day.
Planned articles reportedly include “Green Party Admits Entire Economic Policy Was Written On Back Of Cosmic Energy Drink Can,” “Massey Announces Compulsory 8am Lectures To Improve Student Morale,” and “Arts Degree Reclassified As Expensive Podcast Subscription.”
Editors believe these headlines will encourage students to share the articles alongside captions such as “this is actually so harmful,” “Palmerston North is beyond saving” and “who gave these people a platform?”
The strategy is expected to create a more balanced comments section, with traditional readers writing “FAKE NEWS” in capital letters while students respond with several paragraphs explaining that the article reinforces a damaging social narrative.
“This is about bringing generations together,” the spokesperson said. “One group will fail to notice the satire label because they did not read past the headline. The other group will notice it, understand the joke, and still become furious because satire is only acceptable when it targets someone else.”
The Herald has also announced plans to modernise its comment section vocabulary. Editors hope phrases such as “utter rubbish,” “disgraceful journalism” and “you should be ashamed” will gradually be supplemented by newer expressions including “problematic,” “deeply unserious” and “I’m not doing the emotional labour of explaining why this is bad.”
However, early testing has revealed that provoking students may be more difficult than expected. Several test subjects reportedly refused to read any article longer than two paragraphs, while others immediately asked whether the publication had released the story as a TikTok slideshow.
One student said they would never support an organisation that intentionally manufactured outrage for engagement, before sharing the post to four group chats, two Instagram stories and the Massey University noticeboard.
Herald management has described that response as “exactly the sort of ethical objection and free marketing we were hoping for.”
The plan has already received criticism from the publication’s existing audience. One commenter accused the Herald of discriminating against older readers, despite having previously commented “young people are too sensitive these days” beneath an article about students.
Another demanded the Government shut down the publication immediately, apparently unaware that the Government has more important matters to attend to, including pretending Palmerston North is not there.
The Herald has reassured loyal readers that they will not be replaced entirely. Instead, editors hope the two demographics can coexist, argue with one another and collectively generate enough engagement to make the Facebook algorithm briefly acknowledge the publication’s existence.
“At the end of the day, we do not care who misunderstands the joke,” the spokesperson said. “We just want a more diverse range of people misunderstanding it.”
At press time, dozens of students had announced they would be boycotting the Palmerston North Herald, immediately after following the page so they could monitor future posts.