It's funny how the newspaper industry is doing all the handwringing over why people don't read more newspapers. I'm sure the covered wagon industry came up with all sorts of reasons why people shouldn't use a horseless carriage too.

There is nothing sacred about getting one's news via a daily newspaper. Paper is simply a transmission device. It was invented before telelvision, radio and the internet. The product is information, and there is more of that available today than at any time in history.

For newspapers to say that their decline in circulation is due to the fact that today's young people are somehow more ignorant than they were is a whiny excuse. Today's young people are living in the 21st century, and the fact that they don't choose to get their news via 19th century technology is pefectly understandable. The traditional press should change with the times, not blame everyone else when they don't.

I think that the article is glossing over a couple of important things.

First, Manjoo never mentions the role of alternative weeklies. For example: I live in Sacramento, where the free Sacramento News & Review has been doing well for some time, so well that the daily Sacramento Bee has seen fit to compete with it by expanding their weekend entertainment section, Ticket, into a free weekly--which has NO news coverage, of course, unlike the SN&R, which has some of the best non-corporate-oriented journalism in the area.

Second, I believe the reason that so few young people read the news is not because newspapers are boring, but because parents, the media, and the government are all locked into an unwitting conspiracy to keep them ignorant and uninterested in the world around them. Parents raise their children in "safe" suburbs and complain loudly about any possible negative influence in the media they consume. The rightwingers and corporate lackeys who run the government are hostile to the idea of an educated populace, so they cut funds for schools to where they have to do away with civics (along with art, music, reading, and sciences--but athletics get everything they need, of course). And the media does its part by presenting titillating spectacle in order to stir controversy and get ratings, rather than help children (and adults) develop critical thinking skills.

Yes, this is a rant. But seriously, I think Manjoo missed the ball here.

There was nothing 'parochial' about Keillor's review in the NYT of Bernard-Henri Lévy's lameass travel book. The article was dead on and accurate, just as Keillor practically always is. Just read the sinple listing of Lévy's ludicrous itinerary--this is devasting and howlingly funny. So congratulations are in order to Mr. Keillor and to Salon for featuring him.

Hitchen's supposed 'takedown' in Slate relied on nothing but distortion and a malicious tin ear--same as his support of George Bush & the war in Iraq, btw.

Real literacy requires the noting of accuracies vs. inaccuracies. It isn't like TV, where image and blather is everything and people with open shirts and french or british accents can pretend to be intellectuals, and people with fake Texas accents can pretend to be presidents with 'moral character.' This is really why newspapers are in trouble: the loss of a generation of readers who know how to read and see beyond surface appearances.

University of California Santa Cruz takes part in programs with daily newspapers at some of its residential colleges like the one I live at (Porter College). In the dining hall, students can pick up NYTimes, USA Today, San Jose Mercury, and I believe the San Francisco Chronicle. Many students come to the dining hall alone so they can grab a paper and sit and read. These are also students who I believe wouldn't spend time in their rooms logging into Salon.com or NYtimes.com, and most definitely wouldn't pay to have their own subscriptions.

I think major factors in youth reading news is convenience, cost, and time. We aren't going to go out of our way to read up on "dull" stories, we certainly won't be paying for it, and we simply don't have the time or regular schedules to set aside part of our days to reading beyond what we required in our classes.

The dining hall program and RedEye seem to be positive steps in attracting readers in a way that is both convenient and free. Considering that the students at my school read regular versions of the daily papers, I would challenge Red Eye to cut out the fluff. If they are circulating in accessible locations where their target audience have little to do but read (such as public transit), I think they would be suprised as to just how big people under 20's attention span can be for hard, educational news.

Maybe papers like the NYT can translate 10lbs of ads in the Sunday edition into a lower price. $5 for a Sunday paper is actually quite a lot of money.

It astounds me that as newspapers have faced more competition in reporting national news that their response has been to cut local news reporting to save money. This is the one area where they have an advantage. People want to know about crime in their neighborhoods and the latest large developments approved for their areas. The article reported that this is where some of the small upstart papers have placed their emphasis. I certainly hope so!

Well-thought-out and interesting article. But another angle to explore, perhaps in a later article, would be the Washington Post's 'Express.'

I was going to college in Chicago at the time RedEye was released (before it was free to all, it was free on campus) and in grad school in DC recently. The RedEye seemed to me as it was described in the article. But the Washington Post has managed to create a truly newsy commuter paper in 'Express.' Granted, there are plenty of news-obsessed interns floating around offices and newsrooms in DC, but the Express is read quite widely among 18-30 year olds in DC. I imagine other papers could find similar success with a free daily aimed at younger readers more in line with 'Express' than 'RedEye.'