The Harvard Crimson remarks upon new research showing that “only one in 20 teens and one in 12 young adults say they read the newspaper on close to a daily basis.” The research was published by the Kennedy School of Government’s Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy.

The survey of 1,800 young Americans also found that young people are more likely to get news by word of mouth and with very limited depth and perspective. They’re also likely to click or channel-surf away from news after seeing the headlines. They retain few details.

Perspective and depth have always been the value that newspapers provided to news coverage, but young people are clearly rejecting choosing not to consume it. In a world that’s awash in information and which constantly whipsaws and distracts us with headlines, how are we going to create a culture that values insight and analysis? Who’s got the time for that?

Eric Deggans of TampaBay.com points out the absurdity of newspapers’ coverage of their own struggles, noting that journals that aspire to complete truth and transparency obfuscate when it comes to documenting the layoffs and budget cuts that plague them today. He notes that the Sarasota Herald-Tribune and Tampa Tribune are among the Florida papers facing layoffs in markets where population growth is booming.

Editor & Publisher says: “United Press International is cutting 11 positions from its Washington, D.C., bureau, including its lone White House correspondent, Richard Tomkins. The move marks the first time in its history that UPI will have no one on that beat.”

That was Helen Thomas’ beat, remember? Maybe it’s just a reflection of the lack of news coming out of the current administration. Or the fact that fewer and fewer people care what goes on at the White House any more.

Editor & Publisher says: “Harvard University has released a study that concludes that 60 percent of American teenagers pay little attention to daily news, Reuters reports. After interviewing 1,800 people from January through March, researchers at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government found that 28 percent of Americans between the ages of 12 and 17 said they pay “almost no attention” to daily news. Another 32 percent told researchers that they pay “casual attention” to only one news source on a daily basis.”

It seems that teens have grown accustomed to getting only the news they want online and so bypass the front page that tells them the news they need to know – but don’t necessarily want to know. This will present a special challenge to news organizations going forward: If you can’t force your audience to absorb the most important news of the day, how do you get them interested in it?

Newspapers are losing the most ad dollars to the Internet, says a new report from Wachovia Equity Research. The declines are most alarming in newspapers’ traditional advertising strongholds. Newspapers got 24% of telecom advertisers’ spending in 2006, compared to 31.6% the year before. The percentage of auto advertising spent on newspapers fell by half in a single year, from 9.2% in 2005 to 4.6% in 2006.

Interestingly, television is actually benefiting from this budget flight, perhaps indicating that the increasing irrelevance of daily newspapers is an isolated phenomenon, rather than a result of competition from online media. While mainstream media in general continue to feel pressure from online competition, the problems facing newspapers appear to be uniquely daunting.

MediaPost interviews Vivian Schiller, senior vice president and general manager of NYTimes.com. She talks about the online innovation going on in the newspaper industry and how the Times is addressing its audience by narrow vertical categories. There are a lot of interesting ideas there.

You see a lot of enthusiasm for Internet initiatives among the papers that have positioned themselves well in new media markets. These includes the Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post and USA Today. That last paper recently added commenting capabilities to its news stories, and the audience appears to be responding.

The Business magazine out of the UK reports that Rupert Murdoch has succeeded in his bid for Dow Jones, paying $5 billion for the world’s most prestigious business publisher.

It’s interesting that this deal was sidetracked over issues of editorial independence rather than price. Dow has always considered the integrity of the Journal‘s news operation to be a corporate jewel and that’s reassuring. Somewhat.

Still, you can’t ignore the Murdoch legacy. He turned the NY Post into a British tabloid-style scandal sheet whose outrageous headlines are still its best-known quality. Fox News’ right-leaning, sensationalist reporting makes a lot of people in the TV news business wince. The Times of London, another Murdoch acquisition, has never regained its reputation as one of the world’s great newspapers.

Of course, the Journal already has a conservative political bent and it has done the best of any national newspaper at keeping its editorial voice relevant to changing audience tastes. But you have to wonder what the paper will look like in five years.

The International Herald Tribune reports that Journal staffers are worried about layoffs, and well they should be, given the precipitous drop in business-to-business print advertising noted in the article. IBM’s magazine and newspaper ad spending fell from $144.6M in 2004 to under $37 million last year, the article notes, citing TNS Media Intelligence figures.

Fortunately, Dow Jones has been ahead of the pack in moving its ad business online. Media Post reports that online revenues now account for 30% of Dow Jones’ total sales. There’s no question that the Journal will survive the coming newspaper meltdown. The question is: in what form?

Mark Glaser offers “10 Reasons There’s a Bright Future for Journalism” touching on many of the themes I outline in my own essay on this topic. If one can stop mourning the end of the traditional model of one-to-many journalism and think about the exciting possibilities of involving multiple voices and perspectives in the process of reporting and presenting the news, then the future looks pretty exciting.

Media Daily News analyzes NBC co-chairman Marc Graboff’s offhand comment about canceling original programming on Friday evenings and sees it as emblematic of the networks’ overall financial woes.

The networks are turning to reality TV for the same reason newspapers are turning to blogs: it’s cheap programming. The problem is that it’s also largely undifferentiated and boring after a while. Maybe hooking up with YouTube to find some new talent would be a good idea.

“The magnitude of the recent declines is extraordinary for a non-recession period and provides concrete evidence, in our view, that the share shift from print to online in the publishing industry is accelerating,” says analyst Peter Appert in a research note that sharply reduced earnings estimates for the newspaper industry as a whole and singled out McClatchy and NYTimes Co. as stocks to sell. The story appears in Editor & Publisher.

The analyst forecast it’ll be at least five years before online revenue equals print revenue in the industry. On a more positive note, he predicts, “Ultimately, we believe newspaper publishers will re-emerge as very healthy and dominant players in the local media marketplace.”

Let’s hope so, but the transition could take longer than five years, and the eventual leveling of revenues will be due as much to declines in print as to growth in online. Whatever form the transition takes, it’s going to be ugly and very painful.