Much has been written about the city's two "newspapers for young people" and what their existence heralds. While their publishers, the Tribune and Sun-Times, say that the "news lite" approach functions as a way to appeal to people between 18 and 34.

I still see a lot of people reading these on the train, so there may well be a market for this. It's always bothered me, however, that they've never bothered to explain how these papers serve as "gateway drugs" to grown-up papers. Less satisfactorily still, they've never managed to explain away the insulting assumption that the kids need to have their news dumbed down.

A couple of articles this week have provided some interesting comparisons. Newsday reports on "Why Won't Johnny Read?":

"The traditional media aren't relevant to the lives and lifestyles of the young," said John K. Hartman, a journalism professor at Central Michigan University who has spent more than 20 years studying the news habits of young adults. "They like it fast and quick. They want the headlines but not the details. They haven't been brought up with the idea they need to be fully informed," the 57-year-old said.

In contrast, Columbia Journalism Review talked to 13 groups of journalists under 30 about what their "Dream Newspaper" would be. The results are a lot more interesting than anything we're seeing in the Reds these days...

On the one hand, The Dream Newspaper would never “talk down” to its readers or “dumb down” information in a misguided attempt to reach young people. On the other hand, the paper would not assume that readers know everything—the complete history and play-by-play of events in the Middle East, for example.
.....
“All efforts to cater to this demographic include being stupid,” says Creative Loafing’s Andisheh Nouraee. “Newspapers assume our generation wants nothing more than fluff, twenty-four-seven entertainment. That is flat-out wrong.” Rather, The Dream Newspaper would include more examination of pop culture—or, as our City Pages group puts it, “more subversive analysis of pop culture.”
...
There were several calls for magazine-style, narrative pieces. “Narrative journalism brings people into stories,” says S. Mitra Kalita, twenty-six, a business reporter at Newsday. “We should make stories about the Middle East so engaging, so novel-like that you can’t help but read them.” Our group from City Pages favors articles that “describe the hell out of” a place or a scene. “The more a writer can hang out with a band, a politician, a policeman, and experience what they’re experiencing, and then paint a portrait of them, the better,” says Melissa Maerz, twenty-four, a City Pages music editor. Longer, narrative pieces could be serialized, several groups suggest, like Thomas French’s multi-part pieces at the St. Petersburg Times.
...
The Dream Newspaper would up the flippancy factor, and embrace a conversational tone and less formal language.
...
The Dream Newspaper would place more value on—and take more time with— caption-writing, says our group from The Oregonian, because “young readers are visual readers.” (But it’s a mistake, Sung says, to think of “our generation being unable to comprehend something if it isn’t in full color with cute captions and screaming headlines.”)

Granted, the young journalists are a self-selecting group of people who like to read. But the message they're sending is that they, as readers and writers, need more challenge, not less--delivered in a new-school, rather than an old-school way.

The Dream Newspaper sounds pretty good to me, too.