Make editorial pages matter: attracting younger readers: no pandering allowed.

Who is Seymour Hersh and what's he saying about U.S. plans to attack Iran? How about the Duke president apologizing for abandoning his innocent lacrosse team? What's with Florida deep-sixing its no-fault auto insurance requirement?

Not a clue.

All I got were blank stares from my junior and senior students in the editorial and critical writing course I teach at the University of South Florida. (We start most classes with a discussion of news of the day.)

Let's try something else. Pop culture. News of the weird. USF Bulls football success.

Into them all.

Are the students hopelessly frivolous and empty-headed? Hardly. Fully three-quarters have delivered detailed, well-argued, interesting columns, many of which I'd be proud to publish in my imaginary daily paper, campus or commercial.

Newspaper opinion pages, however, aren't for them. At least at this point.

They find the reading drudgery. Why? Boring and irrelevant topics. Shallow research. Sloppy, lazy writing. Unanswered questions. They distrust corporate media-speak and demand authentic voices, which they find missing in the commercial press.

(I know all this because the class regularly read and discussed editorial pages as assignments. They critiqued a week's worth of editions of one Florida paper in particular at the editor's request. The most vocal weren't impressed. And said so. In writing to the editor.)

Several forces seem to me to be at work in the background that help explain some--but hardly all--of the students' lack of attraction for the topics that populate many editorial pages.

Curriculum "reform" in elementary and secondary education (especially the mania over standardized tests) has driven out civics, history, and political science teaching in the students' schooling. The students, not surprisingly, are ahistorical and disconnected from larger community issues and concerns.

In addition, most of these kids haven't been taught, at home or in school, to distinguish between their roles as citizens and as consumers. They've rarely encountered, and been shown, the building blocks necessary to be a citizen.

They are bombarded with examples of consuming behavior. They know how to shop; they are uncertain about finding their larger role in a community or know what a community is all about and the ways it works.

Opinion pages of the future, no matter the delivery vehicle, can reach these readers, it seems to me.

The students do read, especially magazines, Websites, and blogs. They are finding content to engage with and respect, much of it delivered by professional journalists.

Let's list our professional strengths when we operate in top form:

1. Authoritative research that produces well argued and clear points of view.

2. The staying power to define a public agenda and remain on message.

3. The guts to take strong stands.

4. A nose for knowing what matters to the people we want to reach and the communities we serve.

5. Crystal-clear, vivid writing that grabs you by the throat.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Those are age-old qualities of excellent journalism. It matters not whether the delivery vehicle is ink on paper or various digital devices here and to come. It matters most that our performance measures up to our professed standards and our customers' expectations.

We ought not pander to frivolous interests on our pages. Pandering won't get these young people, and they'll see right through it. But we must stay tuned to the issues that will affect them when they do decide to become citizens. And we must write about those issues with the authority, courage, and vividness that has always characterized our very best work.

Gil Thelen is the James A. Clendinen professor of editorial and critical writing at the University of South Florida and executive director of the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors. He retired from The Tampa Tribune in 2006. Email: gthelen@cas.usf.edu