What started out as a way for the San Jose Mercury News to attract new readers has now been cut to save money.

The “Read This!” section for teens and written by teens had appeared on the back page of the A&E; section once a week. But circulation declines lead to revenue declines, and then all those programs designed to stop circulation declines got cut.

It’s one of those vicious cycles. And the consequences are best described by those affected. Here’s student Sasha Guttentag in a letter to the editor:

"Read This!" is one of the best ways to get young people involved, because reading something written by people our age helps us understand how each issue is related to us, and makes the stories more appealing . . . I can promise you that every issue with "Read This!" is the first section I turn to, and I will read every word on that page.

And student Rachel Wolf brings the point home in her letter:

As high school students, we begin to follow the news by reading newspapers - "Read This!" enables the transition into readership by covering important issues that are relevant to teens and by doing so in students' voices, to which teens can relate.

The Mercury's readership looks for "Read This!" on the back of the A&E; section every Tuesday. Most weeks, the page is even clipped and posted in my school's Academic Resource Center. To strip the paper of "Read This!" would be to do a disservice to all the teen readers (and possible future subscribers) for whom it has provided a gateway to greater interest in the world.

Don’t take only the students’ word for it. Read the studies done by the newspaper industry that back them up. The headline on this one from 2005 was: “Study: Newspapers that attract teens retain them as adults.”

A new study shows that most teenagers who read the newspaper continue the habit as they get older. According to the Newspaper Association of America Foundation, 75% of those surveyed between the ages of 18 and 24 who said they read the a newspaper when they were younger (13-to-17) now read their local paper at least once a week.

If newspapers conduct studies that detail how to create future readers and still totally disregard the findings, then they deserve to die. RIP, Mercury News.

In the interest of disclosure (and probably only supporting my argument that cutting teen news in print equates to shooting oneself in the foot), I wrote for the counterpart of Read This! in my local newspaper during high school.