Last December, NBC Nightly News anchor Tom Brokaw stepped down from his position. Dan Rather resigned as anchor for CBS News in March after a scandal involving false documents in a report on President Bush’s absence from National Guard duty. That was followed by “Nightline” host Ted Koppel’s departure from ABC. And just last week, Peter Jennings announced that he is undergoing treatment for lung cancer and will be periodically absent from the anchor desk of ABC’s evening newscast.

Fortunately, the wave of resignations has so far not affected Jon Stewart, who will continue to anchor Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show.”

The flurry of changes in network newscasts has been the source of much media introspection regarding the future of what some regard as a sacred institution: the evening news. Some “Chicken Littles” claim that the sky is falling: Viewers are turning to substanceless 24-hour news networks, reading extremist Web logs or listening to partisan talk radio. (Insert audible gasp here.) Others shrug it off and say “the networks will rise again” with as much credibility as I have when I make the perennial claim that “I really think this is going to be the Royals’ year.”

The truth is that the networks have much to fear. Audiences have been in a steady state of decline since the 1980s, even as ratings increase for 24-hour cable news networks. The trend is likely to continue, as the average age of a network news watcher is now 60.

Young people are unaccustomed to sitting down to the evening news at 5:30. They’re more likely to think that “The Fleecing of America” is an Old Navy commercial than a segment on the NBC Nightly News. Many would be hard-pressed to match the names of the major news anchors with faces. (Hint: Ted Koppel is the one with the ugly rug on top of his head.)

This is not another gripe about apathetic college students who are too self-absorbed to care about what is going on in the world. Quite the contrary, young people are rejecting the dull, dumbed-down, passive intake of news in favor of specialized news, witty insight and controversial opinions that are just the click of a mouse away.

Everyday, I see students read the Daily and discuss it before, after and during class, and many students keep up the with the happenings in their hometowns through online newspapers and word of mouth. They proudly post their opinions on their own Web logs or dorm room doors, and they debate local and national controversies at the cafeteria table.

Rather than celebrating the increased accessibility of news and ability of the average person to make his or her opinion known, even those who call themselves liberals have questioned the qualifications of digital opiners. They yearn nostalgically for the return of the tri-network oligopoly — before Fox News turned journalism into screaming matches and the Internet made it possible to ignore news that was ideologically displeasing.

To fear the decentralization of media power betrays a lack of faith in the common person to distinguish fact from propaganda and wisdom from foaming at the mouth. It suggests that people lack the ability to judge for themselves in the marketplace of ideas without professional editors and news analysts filtering its content.

The passing of the age of network domination is nothing to mourn. The evening news is not a sacrosanct institution; it is one method of disseminating information that failed to change with the times, rebuffed efforts to reform and neglected to captivate an entire generation of news consumers.

New media have replaced the old. These media are interactive, entertaining, readily available at all hours and sometimes loud and discordant. But they serve a purpose — to ensure that a more important institution will not fail: The freedom of speech and of the press enshrined in the First Amendment.