It's no new phenomenon that newspapers are losing readers. I first heard about this ''problem'' when I was in graduate journalism school back in the go-go '80s.

The fact that this remains a puzzle to newspaper editors and publishers surprises me. I figured out the answer during my first week in j-school. And it is just as relevant today -- to both journalists and those who work with them.

Think back to your days as a student and you'll recall English teachers taught that the great writers were folks like Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Shakespeare. We were fed a steady diet of writing at this level throughout middle school, high school and, perhaps, college.

This fact jumped out at me as I was learning basic news writing, where we were taught to produce sentences like this:

''A young man in a purple jacket and cowboy boots allegedly beat and stabbed a nightclub owner shortly after 2 a.m. Thursday, leaving the businessman in critical condition, police said."

You get the idea. The sort of writing we see in newspapers today is clearly not writing at its best. It is a form designed to be brief, pack as much of the news at the top of the story as possible, and be understandable to those at a 7th or 8th grade reading level.

However, the new media that newspapers finding themselves competing against face none of those constraints. Newspaper stories are short because, very simply, newsprint costs money. Putting the news at the top derives from a somewhat antiquated need to be able to trim story length by removing paragraphs at the bottom. The reading level is a requirement of a publication that seeks to be everything to everyone.

The last point is really the problem. With so many media formats available -- print (newspapers, magazines), broadcast (radio, TV, satellite TV), Internet (news sites, blogs, Podcasts, etc.) -- people will seek out their own favorites. There's no way to be a mass media to all.

Thus, newspapers with awful writing are being seen as, simply, newspapers with awful writing. If the product stinks, no one will buy it. Particularly when there are alternatives.

In the not-too-distant future, the only people who will read newspapers will be those who really love to sit down and read good, well-written stories in the morning with their bagels and coffee.

This assumes, of course, that newspapers can deliver such a product.