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ANNIE BAXTER: They probably don't know it, but Kelly Harrington and Carla Aguilar are a daily newspapers worst nightmare. The two young women, who are both in their early 20s, sit chatting in a cafe called Plan B in the Uptown neighborhood in Minneapolis. If you ask them--

Do you read newspapers? Do you look online? Where do you get your news?

--a long pause ensues. The two women smile at each other. And Kelly Harrington finally answers.

KELLY HARRINGTON: Um, Star Tribune sometimes. Yeah, sometimes online.

ANNIE BAXTER: The women say they just don't follow the news that much. Kelly Harrington says she's especially turned off by the local daily papers because she doesn't think they adequately cover topics relevant to her, such as reproductive issues. Just across the room sits another version of the problem newspapers face. 32-year-old Maya Rose is an avowed news junkie. But The Star Tribune and Pioneer Press aren't part of her daily media diet. She checks out alternative sources like news from Babylon or Al Jazeera. Rose says she's turned off by what she considers the local papers' schmaltziness.

MAYA ROSE: I'd like to have more facts instead of feel good stories about this soldier came back, and this is what happened to him after he got back. I think their stories are important. But personally, I'd really like to hear the facts, the numbers, what's really happening.

ANNIE BAXTER: Across town in his office at The Star Tribune, editor Anders Gyllenhaal is paying close attention to the reasons young people are ignoring his paper. He can practically channel the thoughts of the women in the cafe.

ANDERS GYLLENHAAL: There were many ways in which the paper simply wasn't including younger readers in the conversation that is a newspaper.

ANNIE BAXTER: Gyllenhaal's expressing a reality that shared across the newspaper industry. Media analysts say papers have been losing readers for years. And they say papers need to start working hard now to cultivate people under age 20 as readers in order to enjoy their readership loyalty as adults.

Competition with online news sources, TV, and radio has already led to significant declines in readership and advertising sales, as well as job cuts, at papers around the country. Media consultant and newspaper editor Dick Weiss says a number of recent studies show that newspapers need to plug into people's experiences. He says that's what media consumers are looking for.

DICK WEISS: They don't come to the media to find out what happened, necessarily, at a city council meeting. They don't wake up in the morning wondering oh, I wonder what the city fathers are doing today unless there happens to be a flood in their community. What they do have concerns about are their kids, their relationships, what happens to them when they go to work. And if we write stories and build stories around those themes and those topics, we can reach readers of any age.

ANNIE BAXTER: The Star Tribune has been doing its own research over the past 18 months or so, trying to figure out the best way to bring more readers on board. In one experiment, the paper engaged Northwestern University's Readership Institute to study what kind of news stories grab young people's attention. They produced versions of The Star Tribune that treated routine stories in unexpected ways. They used humor and more stimulating visuals.

And they found that these techniques made the paper far more appealing to younger readers. In addition that found that readers liked accessing information through a variety of components, including Q&As and bulleted sections, not just standard narrative. Editor Anders Gyllenhaal says the new Star Tribune draws from those findings.

ANDERS GYLLENHAAL: Here's a prototype of the paper in front of us. And each of these stories of any length has summaries on top of them so you can grasp that. There's also something called One Minute Strib that is a summary of the entire paper in a single column, if that's the kind of day you're having. At the same time, you turn the pages, and you can find stories of great length that go into international news.

ANNIE BAXTER: Gyllenhaal says the paper's redesign is an effort to appeal to all readers. He says the paper has not focused singularly on attracting more young readers, as other papers have. In Chicago, both The Sun-Times and Chicago Tribune have launched separate papers specifically targeted at younger people.

Gyllenhaal says certain sections of The Star Tribune do target young people. But overall, he says the strengths of those sections, livelier writing, better visuals, deliver what all readers want. So he says a personal finance section called Ka-Ching has broad interest, even with stories about, say, college debt.

ANDERS GYLLENHAAL: Ka-Ching is unapologetically aimed at younger readers. But we're finding it's of interest to all readers. A lot of us have children who are in this age group. And just because you're writing about paying off college debt doesn't mean you're not interested in that. So Ka-Ching turns out to have a lot of appeal. But it also, very pointedly, is being received well by younger readers. That's an example of what the whole paper needs to do and is doing.

If there was any way to get a tease to the special section above the fold, that's what was really special in today's paper.

ANNIE BAXTER: In a news meeting at the St. Paul Pioneer Press, there's plenty of talk about this industry-wide question of how to attract more readers. About a year ago, the paper decided to strengthen its coverage of local news. And the paper's new editor, Thom Fladung, who just took over the helm last week, says better local coverage will bring more readers. He points to a recent front page story about a Catholic priest in Wisconsin whom a judge posthumously found likely to be guilty of murder. Fladung says it's the kind of story that can intrigue a wide audience.

THOM FLADUNG: It's a great murder mystery, first of all. And who doesn't that appeal to? There are also issues that it raises about the now well-known, unfortunately, abuse stories within the Catholic Church. That's a good example of the kind of local news story that I think is essential that we have. And we need more of them.

ANNIE BAXTER: But Fladung acknowledges that newspapers are under a lot of pressure to do more than just good storytelling. That might mean embracing blogging, podcasting, or whatever comes next. Media consultant Dick Weiss is adamant about the need for adaptation.

DICK WEISS: Maybe we shouldn't even refer to these businesses as newspapers anymore. They're communication empires, almost. They have to get much better at using the web. Some of them will be partnering or buying television and other vehicles. And a young reporter who comes into this business is going to need to have some facility for writing certain story forms for certain platforms.

ANNIE BAXTER: Over in The Star Tribune's newsroom, where the paper will soon launch its new design, reporter Steve Brandt says he's worried about all the multitasking that will be expected of reporters where he works and elsewhere. He says it could take away from the important work of reporting. And in the case of The Star Tribune, he's concerned that the reporting will be further diminished by the redesigned paper's greater attention to graphics. All the visuals take up space and could force reporters to leave out important information.

STEVE BRANDT: And that concerns us because a lot of the subtlety that we do is in the copy and can't be conveyed in headlines and cut lines and break out boxes.

ANNIE BAXTER: And finally, Brandt is concerned that the grand experiment his paper is doing won't pan out in an industry where job layoffs are rampant. But media experts say unless newspapers can reverse a long decline in readership, more layoffs are guaranteed I'm Annie Baxter. Minnesota Public Radio News.