Target markets

I work for a newspaper, and it's an interesting job to have in this era of 24-hour news and all-access news Web sites.
This is not a diatribe on the death of newspapers, or an essay on the excellence of print journalism.
No, let's discuss target markets.
Our bosses tell us to try to "spin" stories to attract young (age 18-34) male readers, or to make sure to include stories that will draw these readers to our paper. Our story budgets are inspected for stories that can be marketed to these readers. Newspaper groups even host seminars on studies of young readers and what they want.
Two problems:
1) They don't really mean they want young male readers. They actually mean they want young male skateboard and punk music enthuthiasts. As older white people (mostly men), they have this specific image of youth culture and anything outside that male skateboarding, punk rocking stereotype doesn't fit, and certainly won't be addressed in our paper. A story about, say, the beat spots to photograph this year's brilliant crop of wildflowers (we've had a rainy spring thus far) is dismissed as "not target market." Young male photographers simply aren't part of the equation. One co-worker said any story can be attractive to any target market, it just has to be spun a certain way. But as long as we have such a myopic view of youth culture, we won't be seeing stories that will appeal to a wider youth market.
2) They want us to remain a wholesome family newspaper. Not every story needs to be peppered with "damn" and "hell" (neither of which we can use in our paper, by the way), but there's a freedom to the writing and topics in the alternative publications that DO attract the youth market our bosses say we want. Our editorial board is conservative, meaning you'll never find a pro-Democrat slant on our opinion page. Stories about bands or bars to which the target market may be attracted go unwritten lest they turn off older readers. (One Stop Weird Shoppe note: I realize the irony in saying the bosses have a specific stereotype of young male readers, then implying that all young male readers are liberal bar hounds.)
But I guess newspapers aren't the only business grappling with the target market issue.
A sushi restaurant we frequent has a sign posted inside the bar, facing the cash register, where the waitresses can see it every time they ring up a bill: "Play old people music ONLY!"