Ever since the NEA released its "To Read or Not to Read" study, we've been going through what today's Guardian calls "yet another 'Johnny can't read' mini-panic." It's true: even Steve Jobs jumped into the "people don't read" fray. But the report omits, well, a lot. Screen-based reading, for one. AKA, the entire Internets!

It's the sort of "our kids in peril" story - right up there with threats of MySpace predators - that plays well as a three-minute television newsbite or a three-paragraph op-ed piece. But if you actually read the report, what you find are some startling omissions - omissions that ultimately lead to a heavily distorted view of the Google generation and its prospects.

And of course we are writing more, and writing in public for strangers: novel readers may have declined by 10%, but the number of bloggers has gone from zero to 25 million. Simply excising screen-based reading from the study altogether is like doing a literacy survey circa 1500 and only counting the amount of time people spent reading scrolls. [The Guardian]