Keen to establish its creds with a younger market, Australia’s ThinkNewsBrands media marketing group has published its first ‘News Nation’ report.

Based on a survey by Roy Morgan, it shows that Australians – particularly Gen Z – are becoming more discerning about how they stay informed and are turning to news media.

The group’s chief executive, Vanessa Lyons said the research showed Australians’ appetite for news remained strong: “What’s shifting is how and why they access it.”

The group is a consortium made primarily of Nine Publishing, News Corp Australia and SWM’s West Australian Newspapers, and chaired by News’ Dan Krigstein.

The ‘News Nation: Why journalism has never mattered more’ report, draws on eight studies examining the role of modern journalism and the value it holds for advertisers, supplemented by further studies from Australia, the UK and the US.

Key findings include:

-78 per cent of Australians see national news publishers as trustworthy compared to 36 per cent who think the same of content creators;

-almost 40 per cent of Australians say they turn to news media to fact check information they see on social platforms;

-more than half of Gen Z regularly follow five or more news sources to rely on;

-85 per cent of Australians report feelings of greater confidence in a brand when they encounter it within a journalistic environment.