Television and radio news floods the airwaves; major events from across the globe pop instantly onto home screens; computers and fax machines relay information in a flash. But anyone who thinks the media boom has created a nation of news junkies needs to readjust his antenna. A sobering new study titled The Age of Indifference, released last week by the Times Mirror Center for the People & the Press, reveals that young Americans are barely paying attention. The under-30 generation, it reports, "knows less, cares less and reads newspapers less" than any generation in the past five decades.
The sharp drop...