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A few days into my internship last summer at a newspaper in San Bernardino, one of the editors, a veteran in the newspaper industry for over 50 years, told me that newspapers are a dying business. What a great way to try and start a career.

His reason? People just don’t read any more. But there I was, out of my second year and idealistic as heck, being told that something I’ve worked so hard for, and planned to work even harder for in the future, was heading toward obsolescence. It sounded like a reason to stop trying to be a journalist and make the trade-off to be in a more stable but boring career.

But now I see declining readership across the board as a call to change – and no, it’s not the idealism talking. Newspapers can change because it happens all the time. The content and design of a publication can change hours before deadline in response to current events. The staffs of publications aren’t slouches; they can change, but they need a direction.

We need that direction from people who already read the Daily Bruin to help us make it into a paper that would make more people want to read it regularly. The crosswords are fun, but give the rest of the paper a shot throughout the year.

The stakes are especially high now; abysmally low percentages of young people are consuming the news and traditional methods of presenting the news aren’t working.

According to a 2004 survey conducted by the Pew Research Center that tracked news consumption, only 23 percent of young adults between the ages of 18 and 29 said they read a newspaper on a regular basis. Eighteen percent watch nightly network news, and 29 percent watch nightly cable TV news.

While younger people are relying on the Internet for their news, Stephen Hess of the Brookings Institution, a Washington-based think tank that analyzed the results, connects the dearth of news consumption to low youth voter turnout and said the trends do “not bode well for civic responsibility.”

A free press should be supported because it’s an endorsement of our basic rights. And even before young people are of voting age, the apathy and ignorance of high school students toward the First Amendment is alarming.

Another study, sponsored by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and released this year, found that about 73 percent of students either take for granted or have not formed an opinion of the First Amendment.

Only 51 percent of students felt that newspapers should be allowed to publish freely without government approval of stories, compared to 80 percent of teachers.

It’s a dismal picture, but it doesn’t have to be. With the upcoming special California election in which citizens can vote on the eight initiatives, reading the news and knowing your civic duties is more important than ever.

College can be seen as a bubble that insulates us from “real world,” and that obligations such as school, work and a social life can take precedence over learning about current events and reading or watching the news. But what better way to prepare yourself for the real world than actually knowing what goes on in it?

It’s not only important to read the Bruin, but read it critically. Hold the people who produce what you read to high standards, at least as high as the standards newspapers are supposed to adhere to.

I have to admit that when a paper highly critical of the Daily Bruin was started last year by a former Bruin columnist, I was angry at first.

I don’t know how seriously my colleagues take that paper, but after my initial angry response, I gave the paper serious thought. Even though the basis of the paper reeks of a personal beef, it proved that not only were people reading The Bruin, but reading it critically, which is what the general readership should be doing.

It has been the long-standing duty of newspapers to ask questions of those in charge and hold them to high standards, but who is supposed to ask questions of the newspaper? Newspapers do it all the time in the professional industry, but I’d rather hear from our readership, who can benefit more from the changes. Let us know if you feel like The Bruin isn’t serving its readers and tell us what we can do about it.

Lee, the assistant Viewpoint editor (not the assistant to the Viewpoint editor), can be reached by e-mail at hlee@media.ucla.edu. General comments should be sent to viewpoint@media.ucla.edu.