Why is it, newspaper people always wonder, that the younger generation doesn't read our product? Why do kids find us irrelevant, they ask. And why don't the special youth-targeted things we publish help attract them, the bigshots wonder.

You know how every now and then the Post or the News or even the Journal or the Times is being given away for free somewhere in our fair city, usually in a sponsored-copies promotion? Well, today, apparently, nearly everything's free. Reports a correspondent:

• Philly guys officially snag KR's Philly papers from McClatchy. [NYT]
• Al Siegel has left the Times Building. [NYO]
• Despite AMI noncompete, Star vet Mark Coleman to become deputy editor at Bauer's Life & Style, setting off various other staff moves too mundane for you to care much about. [NYP]
• Magazines want more readers, who are younger and richer. And some even got what they wanted. [WWD]

• Leave no stone unblogged, Times launches one on New York politics, called Empire Zone. Catchy, eh? And it's even got video. [NYT]
• Philly group imminently set to buy Inquirer and Daily News from McClatchy. Unless they don't. [NYT]
• Who will public-edit the public editor? Tom Scocca, of course. [Media Mob/NYO]
• Newspapers acknowledge need to adapt to changing media landscape, express wonderment at newgfangled "horseless carriages." [AJR]
• CBS Public Eye stakes out controversial stance opposing what's-on-your-iPod-stories. See, Memogate never would have happened if only this important site had existed sooner. [CBSNews.com]

• Ian Spiegelman tells Simon Dumenco that Page Six is in fact like the Mafia, that its writers at least feel bad writing homophobic items, and that China and Nicole Kidman are off-limits. Also, though his novel's protagonist takes cash for good coverage, he does not believe the JPS charges. [Ad Age]
• Sulzberger apologizes to graduates for not stopping war, achieving equality, and protecting Roe, and legalizing gay marriage. Next week, he'll apologize to his reporters for giving right-wing anti-Timesers a huge trove of new fodder. [Daily Freeman via Romenesko]
• Things suck at ABC News. [LAT]
• Newspaper people — even David Carr's young friends — worry how much longer they'll have jobs. [NYT]

• In latest stats, newspaper circ is — of course — down. One exception: The mighty NYT. Yay. Elsewhere in town, the Post-News gap narrows, as Rupe's tab loses fewer readers than Mort's. [E&P]
• Bauer to sell Life & Style and In Touch for only a quarter in two weeks. Hey, it worked for the Post. [Ad Age]
• The Forbes family seeks outside investors for European expansion. Being filthy rich apparently ain't what it used to be. [NYT]
• The Times new Weddings/Celebrations videos: Appalling, addictive slideshows. [Slate]
• Kaavya ain't the only plagiarizer out there. [NYM]
• Michael Jackson is mad at GQ, which made fun of him. [BBC]

• Valerie Plame is shopping a book proposal. As if we needed more proof that getting outed was the best thing to ever happen to her. [NYT]
• As RS turns 1,000, Jann Wenner is rich, neat, and happy. And has a sty in his eye. [WP]
• Shocker: Next audit report will show newspaper circ falling more. [E&P]
• Conde Nast is not trying to buy Rodale, nor vice-versa. [WWD]
• The Postal Service wants to increase rates on mags again, after a previous rate hike in January. Clearly, the Postal Service also wants no one in this business to ever have gainful employment again. [Folio:]

• Details missed its rate base on eight of 10 issues in 2005. Fun. [Ad Age]
• Martha Stewart launches Blueprint today in a bid to reach younger readers. There should probably be a joke about Alexis here, but we can't think of one. [NYP]
• Daily Candy remains for sale. [NYM]
• Punch Sulzberger has allegedly said that he'll read the Times on the computer when he can take a computer into the bathroom with him. Now, apparently, he can. [NYT]
• Kurt Andersen thinks we're in a tech bubble again. How does he know? Because Michael Wolff wants in. [NYM]
• Simon Dumenco answers the questions you didn't ask, including whether he has a clothing line and what his jingle sounds like. [Ad Age]
• Existentially speaking, who is Brian Williams? [MW]
• NYT M.E. Jill Abramson's grandfather could have invested early in Paramount Pictures but didn't. [NYSun]

Sig Gissler, the administrator of the Pulitzer Prizes, announces the winners. Actually, and disappointingly, he merely announces the winners are being announced. The World window, behind him, is the highlight of the experience.

• Hachette looks to trim payroll costs (huh, feel like we've heard that before someplace); and Time's Jim Kelly throws a party for Joe Klein. [NYP]
• Feeling you haven't been reading enough memoirs lately? (And, really, don't we all feel like that?) Not to worry: There'll be twice as many next year. [WSJ]
• And the newspaper business continues to slowly die. [NYT]
• In new Howell Raines memoir, only two chapters of 43 are about the Jayson Blair saga. [E&P]
• Jann Wenner's longtime assistant is set to leave the company, and, remarkably for that shop, everyone likes her. [WWD]

• Bonnie's rich AMI contract is up at the end of June, and — as one of her mags gets shut down and another's redesign is more or less undone — negotiations are underway. Great timing, eh? [NYP (second item)]
• Newspapers execs met in Chicago, surrounded by dinosaur skeletons. Sexy Jon Fine enjoys that metaphor, as he should. [BizWeek]
• Who does Spin hire to replenish its now-virtually-empty staff ranks? An alt-porn auteur and star, naturally. [FBNY]
• Injured ABC anchor Bob Woodruff sends note to colleagues, releases photo. We're very pleasantly surprised to see that he does, in fact, still look like an anchorman. [AP/USAT]
• Forward politics writer E.J. Kessler to move to New York Post op-ed gig. Because people jump from socialist to conservative papers all the time. [Forward]
• All the standard kvetches about media? Wrong, wrong, and wrong, says Bill Powers. [NJ]
• Arthur Gregg Sulzberger, the son of Pinch who we've attempted to saddle with the nickname Prince, to leave the Providence Journal for The Oregonian in Portland. Wonder where he'll end up? [Providence Phoenix]
• NYT Congress reporter Sheryl Gay Stolberg to become paper's White House reporter. [Media Mob/NYO]
• The Voice loses another, this time investigative reporter Jennifer Gonnerman. [Media Mob/NYO]
• Are Conde Nast editors being shut out of Devil Wears Prada screenings? Um, no. [WWD]

• Ad-sales side of Conde's forthcoming business mag is filling up; prez/pub David Carey expects mag to be fully staffed — biz and editorial — by Thanksgiving. [MIN]
• Breaking: More and more people people are reading newspapers on the web. [WP]
• Candace Bushnell, Cindi Leive, Jill Abramson, and Geena Davis win New York Women in Communications' Matrix Awards. [WWD]
• Bill Keller is overly absorbed with questions of self-absorption, says Jay Rosen. [Guardian]

• A discovery at Conde Nast: It's a good thing for print magazines to also have websites! "You gain a broader audience and more loyalty from your subscribers if you extend the experience into the Web," says Advance.net president Steven Newhouse. Who knew?

• Michael Kinsley thinks newspapers should give up on objectivity. We, of course, despise that idea of subjective coverage. We really despise it. [Slate]
• The latest Times/TimesSelect op-ed/website combo: Columns from Judith Warner. [NYTCo.]
• Sales are finally picking up at OK! America, and so Sarah Ivens gets a new contract. [NYP (second item)]
• Is CBS using Public Eye to take potshots at NBC? One can hope. [LAT]
• John Huey has good taste in lip balm. [WWD]

• Will Katie go to CBS? We continue to not really have any idea. [USAT]
• What did Bonnie Fuller learn from getting fired from Conde Nast? "Blatant disloyalty is never the smart course of action." Who knew? [NYT]
• Kurt Andersen thinks — hopes! — that the celebrity moment might finally be over. [NYM]
• Elizabeth Spiers is starting a blog about Wall Street. Also, she used to work here. [IWantMedia]
• Esquire has a funny spoof in its new issue written by — who else? — a Foer brother, in this case champion memorizer Joshua. [WP]
• Simon Dumenco isn't sure newspapers will survive, and he can't believe it took the Times until now to get rid of the printed stock tables. [Ad Age]
• Jim Surowiecki thinks newspapers will survive, and he can't believe it took them until now to get rid of printed stock tables. [NYer]
• WWD media reporter Jeff Bercovici breakfasts on spelt toast with almond butter and a home-brewed cappuccino. [Jossip]
• Syd Schanberg quit his job as the Village Voice's Press Clips columnist just after the New Times deal closed, feeling that the company was no longer interested in media criticism. Friday he won an award for his Voice media criticism. [VV]

Truth is, for all the talk of instant news and reader-generated news and blogs and podcast and streaking video and all of that, the thing on the internet that's really doing the most to kill newspapers is Craigslist. Sure, readership might be disappearing at the same slow trickle it's been disappearing for years — and sure that's a problem — but the bigger problem is the much faster disappearance of classifieds revenue as people selling used cars and people selling real estate and, especially, people who need to fill jobs, move their listings online. As an article in the business section of today's Times notes, The San Jose Mercury News, for example, in 2000 saw $118 million job-listings revenue; last year that number was $18 million.

• More subpoenas for the Times and Judy Miller, this time from Scooter Libby. Fun! [NYT]
• Times reporters win $25k Harvard prize for domestic-spying story. But, of course, the Bushies already knew that. [E&P]
• Newspapers are not, in fact, dying. Apparently it only seems that way. [WSJ]
• Advertisers hate men. [Medialife]

• Big media companies like buying popular websites. Who knew? [Mediaweek]
• 2005 was a bad year for newspapers. You don't say. [WSJ]
• David Carr can't quite figure out why CBS wants Katie Couric so badly. [NYT]
• Lewis Lapham's welcome present for Roger Hodge: Lots of readers pissed off about an article on researchers who dispute the idea that HIV causes AIDS. [NYT]
• Diane Sawyer will be the next World News Tonight anchor. [Newsday]
• No, wait. Charlie Gibson will. [NYP]

Yesterday Knight Ridder finally agreed to sell itself. The pricetag is $4.5 billion and the purchaser is the McClatchy Company, a much smaller newspaper chain heretofore concentrated in California and the Southeast. For editorial types, this is good news: People who value journalism would rather see a newspaper company win an auction like this one than a soulless private-equity firm, and, even, McClatchy is considered to be one of the best newspaper chains. (Its papers spend money on reporting and win awards and — even better — almost always see circulation gains, which is basically unheard of.)

• Dow Jones reorg combines print and online editions of WSJ. [AP via Yahoo]
• New Meredith editorial director Mike Lafavore fires Fitness EIC Emily Listfield and then gives himself the job, at least for now. How very Wennerian. [NYP]
• Carl Icahn's Time Warner breakup plan had a 37-page chapter on why Time Inc. doesn't fit with the rest of the company. How does John Huey react to that? "I didn't find it a very compelling chapter." Of course not. [NYO]
• Jack Shafer prefers his newscasters brunette. [Slate]
• Maxim redesign to remove "a layer of goofiness"; Graydon promises his next car will be a hybrid. [WWD]
• Breaking: Newspapers sometimes create sections as vehicles to attract advertising. [NYO]
• LAT NYC bureau chief to take on book-publishing beat, too. Because there's just not enough going on in the city itself to keep a reporter busy. [LA Observed]
• Eleven mags missed their rate base in the last half of 2005 — and that doesn't even court the half-dozen AMI titles set to miss in the next go-round. [BW]