The Financial Times is still in print, and is still great, but they've dropped what I thought was great about the paper's set-up - that all articles were printed in one clump, so you weren't forced to search the back pages of hte newspaper for the continuation of a compelling article. At least, I THINK the FT used to have all-in-one articles.

I have two reasons for avoiding newspapers:

1. They are messy. The ink, trying to unfold and open and refold the paper so it is redable - I knock over my coffee every time. The continued-on-the-back-pages thing pisses me off as well.

2. Every time I have subscribed to a newspaper or news magazine (like Time) and my subscription runs out, I start getting nasty, form letters that sound kind of personal (I got one threatening to send a collection agency after me - when I called, the CSR assured me that it was a threat used on all college students, althought they couldn't come after me without a social security number). Combined with the almost daily calls to my home and office from the local newspaper pleading for my business, I simply grew tired of the pressure. Plus, I don't reallky have TIME in the morning to sit and gaze through dozens of inky pages. I've got an hour-long commute, so it's NPR, podcasts, and the Internet (once at work) for me.

Dumbing down?

Dumbing DOWN?

Just look at your monitor, Salon folks. By the time you do, there will be at least three more "cute" pet pics posted, still no science news, and AP stories still increasingly more interesting than the rest of the site.

I am not sure the lack of interest in newspapers is disturbing, but the lack of intellectual curiosity is. I'm in my late 20s and I remember being interested in world affairs even as a teenager.

I notice a huge difference in the level of general information in even those just a few years younger than me. I was not at all surprised to read about 20-ish kids not knowing a single supreme court justice.

As a TA in grad school primarily dealing with 18-19 year olds, I couldn't believe how little I could talk about in casual conversation without getting blank stares. And these were pretty smart kids by academic standards. Maybe it's all memorization rather than a desire to understand.

Maybe the difference is the access to the internet that was there all through their high school years. But that doesn't make sense to me-almost anything you want to know is available at your fingertips.

I guess I don't understand the lack of INTEREST. No matter how it's presented, if people have no interest in the information, they're not going to absorb it.

So-why is there so little curiosity about what's going on in the world? I find it totally baffling.

And I don't buy that a lot of kids watching Daily Show are learning that much-maybe superficially. But try to have a conversation with 75% of the audience about world affairs and most won't have a clue.

If there's seemingly so little knowledge, what guidelines are people using to vote by?

I find it a bit ironic that Salon, a web-paper, is posting this article, without fully realizing what the problem really is.

Newspapers used to have very high quality journalism, they used to be worth reading. But we are entering an age when the best journalism is not found in newspapers. In fact I would argue that the quality of journalism found in newspapers is declining. They are more likely to become mouthpieces for politicos, investigative journalism is almost non-existant, and newspapers are rushing for the lowest common denominator of celeberty "news" and reporting on violent incidents.

TV news is even worse then what is amounting to daily rags. Though I would say the Daily Show and Colbert Report have benefited directly from the decline of television news. Why watch the nightly news when these comedians are network and cable news broadcast.

The decline in Newspapers though can be directly attributed to the fact that the web now offers better journalism. While newspapers race to the bottum, sites like Salon, are offering a clear alternative with thier multi-page indepth articles. The writing is often better on the web as well. If these papers were smart, they would realize racing to the bottum would not be the ideal way to grab new readers, but realizing that younger readers are more apt to go to the web, and expect QUALITY journalism when we are seeking the news. Not just lazily written pieces that are often taken directly from press releases.

If there is any benefactor to the decline of newspapers, it is probably sites like Salon, the ones that realize that there is a difference between journalism and just reporting the news off the wires.

I’m also in the target demographic (18-34) for these new trendy pop-culture focused newspapers, but like most of my friends, I stopped reading or subscribing to print papers a long time ago. I don’t like the wasteful nature and environmental impact of newspapers, find all the ads very annoying, and find the analysis to be tepid and meaningless.

To keep up with current events and culture, my go-to sources online include the BBC, The Christian Science Monitor (one of the most fair-minded and thoughtful journals around), SFgate.com (for local news in my home town San Francisco), Le Monde, Der Spiegel, Salon.com, CNN, The Nation, Village Voice, National Review, The New Republic, The Economist, Foreign Affairs, and other international news sites. For science news, I check out Biospace, Scientific American, and other online journals. At work and in the car I often listen to NPR. This à-la-carte survey of news sources provides many different views of what’s going on around the world, different opinions, and different voices.

Of course, this takes a lot of time which most young people don’t have the patience for, but there is no real alternative for getting a breadth of views and forming opinions based on more than sound-bytes and partisan op-ed pieces.

When I travel abroad to Europe, the Middle East, or Asia, I’m amazed how informed about the world most young people are in comparison to most Americans of the same age. There’s definitely a culture of knowledge, discussion, and a hunger for the truth there that seems to be missing here. Sadly, most of us here would rather watch “Entertainment Tonight” than “The Newshour with Jim Lehrer” or read Vanity Fair rather than The Economist. I wonder how many of us here on Salon read Andrew Leonard’s fascinating “How the World Works” rather than “The Fix”? It would be interesting to see the number of hits sorted by demographic.