Sunday, January 30, 2005

Nonreading generation of writers needs 12-step program

By Laura Berman / The Detroit News

Error processing SSI file Comment on this story Send this story to a friend Get Home Delivery

The scene: A college classroom at the University of Michigan-Dearborn.

The subject: Writing the newspaper column.

The question: "Can any of you name a columnist you read -- in a newspaper or magazine or online -- on a regular basis?"

In response: Dead silence.

Slowly, one hand rises. A sports columnist is mentioned.

Nobody else in the room hints at any recognition of the sports columnist's name: Anyone?

"My generation is very visually oriented," explains Ryan Schreiber, a U-M Dearborn junior from Dearborn who -- like most in the class -- is majoring in journalism but doesn't read much of it.

"My generation grew up watching MTV. We are used to short spurts of words, lots of images...We're used to immediate gratification."

He points out that columns like this one are blocks of text, decorated only with a thumbnail photo and a headline.

No dancing images, no colorful pop-ups, no audio.

Words on paper. Blah.

The newspaper columnist likes immediate gratification, too. And imagining a future filled with non-reading writers doesn't provide such gratification. It is, in fact, a terrifying thought.

If the writers don't read, you wonder, how will they know how to write?

Good writers steep themselves in words; they don't ingest them in tiny bytes.

In another journalism class down the hall, the instructor annoyed his students. After asking how many read a newspaper regularly -- four or five out of 35 said they did -- he required them to bring a newspaper to class twice a week. "The students don't like it," says Laura Hipshire, one of the journalism students.

You might think that Schreiber -- who talks about his generation as if it's been impaired by too much exposure to flashy imagery -- is exaggerating. I envision a 12-Step Program for the Non-Reading Generation, as its members fight to recover from an addiction to color graphics and quick bursts of information.

But no one in this class -- or in others I've faced in recent months -- seems to disagree: Words on a page are, like, kind of hard to read when you have "a fast-paced lifestyle," as Schreiber put it. Or when you have "four kids and you're going to college," as Hipshire says.

And newspaper industry surveys show that readership is declining, the average reader is aging, and the future for plain old ink on paper might be measured in candle-power, not high wattage.

What's intriguing is that these kids say they plan to write for newspapers and magazines. They're planning journalism careers. They're dreaming of careers creating products nobody they know uses much.

But Schreiber's generation has seen enough movies and TV shows that depicted enough exciting newsroom scenes to make journalism seem enticing, even glamorous.

TV has a way of selling the wrapper -- the image, all glossed up. And so -- voila -- a career. But it includes, like, words on paper? That you have to read?

You're kidding me.

Laura Berman's column runs Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday in Metro. Reach her at (248) 647-7221 or lberman@detnews.com.