In the fifth grade, I’d developed some fluke of a sad crush on my classmate Sharon, and was happy to be appointed the kid in the class who had to help her with assignments. But Sharon, one day, announced to the class in a big teary-eyed mess that she would never be able to learn long division because she was afraid of big numbers. With her confession of a “big numbers” phobia, my infatuation with her fluttered off like a dimwitted butterfly.

That courtship parallels the one between community newspapers and American youth — it’s all well and good to get in close, but after so many telltale signs of stupidity (or apathy, or illiteracy) — it begs the question, why bother try to appeal to young readers? It’s not big numbers that scare us, or even big words — it’s big information. Anything too complex — anything that cannot be reduced to a pie chart or photograph — seems to ward off readers who are scared they’ll get confused.

I spoke on a panel at last week’s Iowa Newspaper Association conference in Des Moines, addressing how and why community newspapers should still strive to attract younger readers. But talk of this bring to light the dreaded truth: Some my age simply do not read.

At the same conference, Des Moines Register columnist Rekha Basu spoke to the Iowa College Media Association about Iowans’ ability to use the newspaper as cocktail party chitchat. To know what was going on in the community is expected. This didn’t hold true in every community she’d written for — during her months as a columnist in Florida, the community simply did not flock to the headlines the way Iowans did.

This warrants applause for Iowa. Can the same be said of young Iowans, though? Yes. I want to say yes. I have to say some other things first, however.

Reading the newspaper is no longer considered a morning necessity; rather, being a news junkie is now a hobby, a recreational way to spend the first few moments of consciousness.

With the options available to readers — including several publications aimed solely at hitting our age demographic — it becomes harder to publish a product that is appealing to a generation that may or may not give a damn about what’s going on in the world.

This is what drives up the appeal of alternative news sources — Web sites, gossip rags — for readers my age. But digesting information without context is as dangerous as handing a chimp a bottle of Banana Schnapps and a loaded BB gun (or, apparently, giving Sharon a calculator and a four-digit number) — things will go from bizarre to ugly quite quickly.

I refute that people my age consider it uncool to get caught reading a newspaper. It is, however, more than acceptable to have memorized factoids about the dozens of cast members of “The Real World” while having only a vague idea about why President Bush isn’t keen on Iraq.

The role of community newspapers reflects the community itself: Should the audience not include enough young readers, the publication will market itself toward a more reliable audience.

Young ones are busy, it’s true. There are conceivably a thousands tasks to do each day. But none of them justifies overriding the need to know about the community in which we all live.

Overlook that list of things to do for even 30 minutes each morning, and it’s possible to read enough news to function that day as an all-knowing student.

Each newspaper has its niche. You’ve come to ours with the understanding that we will cover this university and its connections to the global community, as well as what’s on the ground level. Read the Register for dedicated coverage of the state. And read your hometown newspaper with the understanding that The New York Times just isn’t going to invest in that bureau for Iowa high school sports coverage anytime soon.

We need not force all newspapers to develop auxiliary publications that will appeal to our age group. The major Chicago newspapers now publish Red Eye and Red Streak in hopes of drawing in (or tricking?) the young ones into reading the news — a mix and match that may include a scant two-sentence summary on North Korea but a cover story on Moby’s distaste for turkey. These are fun and marketed well, but also a sign that even the big players in the newspaper industry are pulling out the big guns — an option for which community newspapers don’t possess the proper resources.

In the days to come, the world will change in a moment’s notice, in a way many people my age cannot as of yet comprehend. We will wake to find ourselves at war, and there simply is not a pie chart that will sum it all up at a glance. The decision to be part of the informed — those that are able to understand what our futures holds because they know what the past has already dealt us — is as easy as throwing two quarters into an investment in a newspaper and fifteen minutes into reading. Waking up to a new world can be a transition or a jolt.

Have we not asked where each of us was when we learned about Sept. 11 or the Columbia tragedy because it is too soon? Or is it because a majority of the young — any that write off reading as uncool — learned of it in embarrassing ways? Should it really be a badge of honor to say we were in our normal routine — reading or watching the news at the crack of dawn — while others of us were caught off guard or hung over or simply did not care or comprehend these things that went on, no pun intended, over our heads? Chances are a working knowledge of Eminem’s lyrics will do little to help in the face of oncoming war.

Thousands of others are doing the long division for us, so don’t fear the big information, even if it means risking coolness for reading.

Cavan Reagan is a senior in journalism and mass communication from Bellevue, Neb. He is the editor in chief of the Daily.