The WSJ readers are boomers -- someone should tell the tech writers

The Wall Street Journal thinks that tech will change your life. Perhaps it will even rock your 2015.  Rocking their 2015 is just the kind of experience that WSJ readers -- average age of 57 -- really want.  But the Journal, ever hopeful for pushing down the subscriber age into the ad world's desirable 20’s and 30’s, hopes that the readers will be as excited as their current breathless tech columnists Fowler and Stern. So they want its boomer audience to grasp How to Get Ready. But of course! Starting with Windows 10 – which will have a resurrected Start menu and yes, it will improve multi-tasking – by the fall of 2015. Now aren't you excited?

Windows 10 is just the end of the beginning!  Also we may see a world-rocking Apple Watch that maybe will 'kickstart' new waves of ideas – hope so, since isn’t this thing just mimicking the smart watches that are currently on the market and are generally considered a bust? Don’t buy those, advises the WSJ. Wait for Apple’s, which will only (mostly) work with iPhones -- even though those pesky Android phones have a larger US market share.  Ah, and in true Walt Mossberg tradition (and by the way, Walt is still loving Apple), today's WSJ tech writers really like Apple Pay – which signed up a million users when the latest iPhone came out. Is that a lot of people? Maybe among 199 million credit card users, it’s just a beginning. But hold onto your wallet, doesn’t Apple Pay still have the potential to become  a hacker’s dream? And consider the WSJ view that fitness trackers will help us be 'healthier humans.'  Makes a good gift apparently, although sales have been less than stellar this past year. And like many attempts at healthy habits launched at the start of a new year, people get tired of them.

The reality -- the Wall Street Journal REALLY wants younger readers.  Know your audience -- and then wish they were not so, uh, mature. Moving past the “rock your 2015” tech talk – the same section published a survey of users of the popular MyFitnessPal app. Hope you can see these pictures -- note the skinny and youthful charm in WSJ-selected photos. See users of SoulCyle and Zumba. Understand that MyFitnessPal, which conducted the survey, does not report the age of its self-selecting survey responders. Now check out the Reuters photo presented on Fox News about the exact same survey.  So at least half of Fox viewers are north of 65 – and also note that ad buyers prefer a demographic age of 25-54.   

Media cynicism – a conundrum caught on camera. According to its article, the Wall Street Journal asked MyFitnessPal to identify its top most-logged activities – and selected the photos to accompany the article. Meanwhile, the paper isolates its boomers and beyond subscribers into their robust Retirement Planning sections. And professional advertising buyers just aren’t buying the editorial preference for young folks in the 'rock your 2015' tech section.  Turn the page to the WSJ CARS page -- check out those ads on December 31 for Maseratis, BMWs, and Porsches. Now mull the ability of the young women in those WSJ pictures of MyFitnessPal fast-peddling Soul Cycle and Zumba groups to buy one of those cars.  How's that for -- disconnected?