As the media go head to head in a campaign to attract younger readers, Oliver Burkeman wonders whether it's time for editors to take a reality check

They don't read newspapers. They don't watch the network news shows. They didn't vote in last week's mid-term elections.

Few things trouble the upper echelons of America's journalistic establishment, like their persistent failure to attract the elusive 18 to 34-year-old demographic, otherwise known as "young people".

A few weeks ago, in Chicago, the battle for their minds and money erupted into open warfare. Echoing the days when rival newspaper proprietors hired gangsters to fight their bitter circulation battles on the city's streets, Chicago's two main newspapers, the Tribune and the Sun-Times, chose the same day at the end of last month to launch rival brash tabloids aimed explicitly at a young audience - and at the advertisers so desperate to reach them.

After months of preparation, the Tribune launched RedEye, available in red boxes on street-corners throughout the city. It was intended to "turn on the 18 to 34-year-olds to the benefits of being well-informed," the paper explained, groovily.

The Sun-Times, caught unawares and intent on taking its share of the ad revenue - or, at least, scuppering the Tribune's plans - speedily wheeled out its rival version, craftily entitled Red Streak. (It did it in three weeks, which probably explains why its own street-corner boxes - drafted into service at the 11th hour - were, unfortunately, blue.) Both papers, which base their coverage on stories from their parent publications, have charged a 25c cover price here and there, but most have been handed out for free - the model followed in Boston, Philadelphia, London and elsewhere by Metro, the tabloid distributed on subway trains and in buses.

Tribune columnist John Kass caught something of the your-dad-at-a-rave atmosphere surrounding the Chicago launches. At least Red Streak, he noted, had the foresight to dedicate its front page to the best in highbrow photojournalism - a shot of Christina Aguilera modelling her behind covered in green spray paint. "Several old men in their 40s ... grabbed my copy of the Sun-Times tabloid and were ogling it, mumbling 'she's the cat's meow!' and 'hoola boolah!' and 'right on!', and other with-it, busta sayings," Kass wrote.

The only problem, say the publications' critics, is the same one as ever: the writers and editors, who are not part of their target demographic, seem to suffer the urge to patronise their audience and embarrass themselves in the process. "There's never been a publication that had such obvious contempt for its target audience as RedEye," Bob Cook wrote in the online magazine Flak.

Matters weren't helped this week when Don Hewitt, the celebrated veteran of the CBS current affairs show 60 Minutes, gave a speech to students at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. It started well. "You have to make a choice," Hewitt said. "Are you going to cater to the best, or to the advertisers?" It was when he was asked about ideas for the future that things started to go wrong. "I think I would love to put together a staff to make a show for college-age kids," Hewitt said. "I'd put stuff in there that would help them learn about the world they're about to enter. I'd call it '60 Minutes Lite'." It sounded suspiciously like diet news, with none of the fattening facts.

The truth of the matter, of course, is that America's coveted 18-34s aren't living in sealed rooms, deprived of information from the world outside. For example, a large number are getting their news from the astonishingly well-crafted Daily Show, a half-hour blend of satire and celebrity interviews that airs nightly on the Comedy Central cable channel.

Since September 11 2001, the show's guests have increasingly included heavyweight journalists, academics and politicians - expertly steered between the twin hazards of being boring and humiliating themselves in trying to be humorous with Jon Stewart, the show's host, who is a stand-up comedian by training. "More 18 to 49-year-olds get their news from the Daily Show than any other cable news programme," Comedy Central noted in a Wall Street Journal advertisement earlier this year. "Heaven help us," the ad concluded.

Actually, the Daily Show's coverage of recent events - up to and including the complexities of the Iraq crisis and the mid-term elections - has been far from puerile. Set alongside the squabble in Chicago, or the prospect of a 60 Minutes Lite, it's by no means clear that it's Comedy Central that needs the help.