If I was a gambling man – and my strict adherence to $10 blackjack tables rules that out – I could have bet that a column on ideas from young people to attract their peers to the paper would quickly turn into a conversation about what’s wrong with the Old Gray Mare, or Gray Lady. Actually, I don’t know if the Press Herald/Telegram has a nickname (or at least a printable one).

In putting together a study on the presence of young people in the newspaper, YOUTHINK went and got itself into one of the bigger ongoing debates in recent years: What the heck is wrong with newspapers, why are they losing readers and who’s gonna pay for all of this?

The media survey, which is scheduled for a bigger rollout next week, does get to the heart of some hard questions for newspapers in two ways: How do we reach any audience that is ignoring us, and especially an audience we’ll need to keep this enterprise going in the future.

In this case YOUTHINK’s recommendations seem to be common sense: Just talk to more young people like you would any other source. As more than a few students told me, having stories about education and schools without students would be like writing a story about politics and not including politicians.

Judging from some of the reader comments, some think that means pandering to the not-old-enough to buy Michelob Ultra set. Others still see it as a waste of time because we all know the young people only care about themselves and the Text Messaging and the Xboxes and every other superficial pop disaster of the moment.

But the comments do point out some of the bigger problems facing newspapers and the industry in general.

Not that it needs any more mentioning, but the financial outlook is not so good for the big, small and medium players in the news business.

Competition is everywhere, as more news is available online, and more phones and pda’s are offering better online service. At the same time blogs are offering news and opinion, and even social networking sites are trying to get into the news game.

There may be some hope as more surveys indicate that
newsprint isn’t exactly destined for dog cages just yet, and some people who read online also read the print paper.

So, at least we've got that going for us.

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