That sweet bird of youth - the twenty-something know-nothing columnist - has recently reached the pinnacle of periodical punditry. With little experience and even less to say, these young women (as they overwhelmingly are) perch haughtily atop their soapbox each week, squawking about their expensive shoes, their disaster dates, their petty jealousies, and their many, many troubled friends. It doesn’t matter which paper you read, for every paper has one: a sorority sister scribbler. Josey Vogels of the Montreal Gazette (“Dating Girl”), Angele Yanor of the Vancouver Sun (“Lucky Strike” is her tag, whatever the hell that means) and that terrible twosome, Rebecca Eckler of the National Post and her bosom buddy, Leah McLaren of the Globe and Mail: this is the brave new face of newspaper journalism.

The reason for this “innovation” in newspapers is an aging readership. Almost nobody under the age of forty reads newspapers; almost every advertiser geared to the boomer and blue-rinse crowd (mutual funds, life insurance, big safe cars) has been tapped. Twenty-somethings have more disposable income and are traditionally harder for advertisers to reach, and newspapers - if they want incremental advertising revenue - need to deliver editorial content that speaks to this demographic. This truism became vitally important with the 1998 launch of the National Post, as it meant yet another newspaper chasing after Lexus, Bell Mobility and London Life for ad money. It is at this time, then, that Eckler, McLaren et al arrived on the scene to speak to “us”: the footloose and fancy free twenty-somethings.

There was a time (or so I’m told) when the column-writing gig was offered up to a seasoned veteran, someone who could write with authority and insight; columnists such as Robert Fulford, William Safire, Michelle Landsberg and Molly Ivins had accomplished careers, inside and outside of journalism, before being given the chance to opine on a regular basis. Yet now the process is reversed: meritocracy has been replaced by juvenocracy. Leah McLaren, shortly after finishing her internship at the Globe and Mail in 1999, was handed a weekly column on a silver platter; a couple years on, and the august journal of national record rewarded McLaren with the plum role of London-based arts reporter. Her first arts column from London centred on her sneering observation that “Englishwomen don’t really groom”, and while this may be the sort of “arts” reporting that is attractive to advertisers, it isn’t exactly Molly Ivins. And perhaps that isn’t McLaren’s fault: she doesn’t know how else to write. After all, it was insipid chronicling of her social cohort - and not any track record of critical thinking - that fueled her rapid rise to fame. Harper’s Magazine editor Lewis Lapham, in the introduction to his book “Lapham’s Rules of Influence”, describes how his own encounters with young media types has found serious thinkers in short supply:

“Impatient with metaphors and bored by sentiment, eager to advance the token of their lives around the Monopoly board of the standard American success, they present themselves as candidates for a life of privilege and ease. Instead of wondering how to catch a falling star or who cleft the devil’s foot, they ask for introductions to Woody Allen and the doorman at Balthazar, about the hope of meeting Peter Jennings and the name of the restaurant where the editors of the Condé Nast magazines go expensively to lunch.”

While someone like Lapham laments the fact that “philosophical questions have gone missing in action” amongst young journalists, others see something more insidious with the rise of the sorority sister scribbler. University of Victoria journalism professor Lynne Van Luven, in the March issue of Thunderbird magazine, said this: “I can’t help but think that these women are pawns in the game of aging editors and their somewhat mainstream publications to look hip.” Van Luven views the Ecklers, McLarens and Yanors of the newsroom as representing a step backwards for women who had fought hard to escape the “society column” ghetto in the 1960s and 1970s: “Who wants to be the newsroom’s disco girl? It’s demeaning.”

Besides being demeaning, this journalistic development has lead to content being “dumbed-down” to please the deity of demography. It has long been assumed by editors that twenty-somethings don’t read newspapers because we don’t like serious news. We don’t read about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict because we don’t care, but give us Rebecca Eckler - who can tell us “how to wear shoes that really hurt” - and we’ll read: she, after all, speaks of matters within our sphere of concern. This light and trite editorial content appeals to advertisers, as it is much easier to hawk L’Oreal cosmetics opposite the “Dating Girl” column than it is beside the “Notes from the Rwandan Slaughter” column. And such an editorial bent isn’t limited to the private sector either: the CBC will soon preside over the death of “This Morning” and other Radio One staples, to be replaced with jazzed-up, “youth-friendly” programming. Sadly, with the CBC one cannot claim that these changes are being done at the behest of eager advertisers; the public broadcaster, with no commercial pressures, is simply misreading the needs and wants of its loyal youth listeners.

What is forgotten in these corporate maneuvers is that twenty-somethings are more than mere social animals; our interests stretch beyond the horizon of our next date. In cynical efforts at manufacturing puerile pap, many newspaper editors mistakenly believe that they are delivering what their younger readers want. These editors, however, are confusing youth with callowness, readers with consumers, and insightful commentary with idle chatter. Newspapers are about more than creating “an editorial environment for advertisers”; they can delve far beyond the shallow depths of consumerist claptrap; and they should offer much more to the next generation of readers than a Peter Pan paradigm of “youth” issues. We are not all idealists, to be sure, but neither are we all averse to confronting the difficult political, economic and social issues which influence our lives.

Undoubtedly, there are those who look to writers like McLaren for guidance on how to best “access the system”, with eager advertisers lighting their way. But there are others who continue to seek out those obscure characters of wisdom and experience: columnists who shine a bright light of informed insight on our starkest realities, and who offer an occasional glimpse at how one might go about changing that system.

Matt O'Grady is a cowboy baby. Good guy.