If you want younger readers, consider their interests.

News executives everywhere agonize over the same question as they see their fairly loyal baby boomers aging without comparable legions of readers to replace them: How do we infuse younger readers with love for and loyalty to a daily newspaper?

At The Seattle Times, one initiative for meeting that challenge came in the area of opinion. In January, the Times launched NEXT, an opinion page with columns drawn from a staff of 22 freelancers, ranging in age from 17 to 25--or the upper range of what demographers call Generation Y.

Six months into the project, NEXT writers have appeared on the regular opinion pages and occasionally have led the Sunday section or appeared in the regular op-ed page because their columns couldn't wait until Sunday. News services have inquired about content. NEXT writers participate on radio talk shows.

Besides the reality of the changing demographics, Cynthia J. Nash, the Times' director of brand and content development, said it also has been noticed that younger people were particularly attracted to the opinionated and edgy alternative press.

"Research said they found opinion to be stimulating," Nash says. "Some of them even said entertaining."

That made the NEXT page a promising endeavor to capture new readers.

Colleen Pohlig, assistant editorial page editor/NEXT, talks about the page in two ways--what it is and, just as importantly, what it is not.

"NEXT is a forum for young people to talk to each other and to give them a voice across generations," Pohlig says. "Generation Y is interested in the same issues as everyone else, but this is a way for them to talk about how these issues affect their generation."

Imagine the difference in perspective about Social Security policy from a boomer 10 years from retirement and a high school senior who won't start collecting until the 2050s.

The writers, culled from about 400 applicants, range from high school students to young professionals, from blue-haired liberal to clean-cut conservative, from world traveler to expectant mother. Three columns are printed in the Sunday NEXT page, which appears on the back of the Times' four-page Sunday opinion section. Because the Internet is important to Generation Y, the Times developed in conjunction with the printed page an online site with several more columns and other content. NEXT marks the first time that online and published content were developed hand-in-hand at the Times.

What NEXT is not is a teen page, Pohlig says. She said she and her writers want the page to be a destination for everyone, young and old. The difference is a perspective from writers who are not only inquisitive and smart but fresh to public policy discussions, and who offer distinctly personal takes on the world.

Editorial page editor Jim Vesely, who confessed an initial skepticism about the project, says the biggest surprise is the "ferocity of opinion" among the writers. "Boy, do they have opinion and, boy, do they carve it out of their own lives," he said.

One high school senior wrote an effective, if unsettling, essay lamenting the casual use of the n-word in conversation and entertainment media. The expectant mother wrote about how women should stay home with their children. Others have written poignantly about racial issues and disagreed with each other on abortion and affirmative action.

Early on, Vesely and Pohlig insisted that NEXT columns meet the same professional standard as anything else that would appear in the opinion section. Pohlig has had to provide coaching with these writers, a couple of whom haven't satisfied their senior high English requirements. But, over the months, the writers found their voices.

"A lot of them were trying to sound like junior David Broders," Pohlig said. "But we're at a point where we are growing into the page."

A few months after launching NEXT is too early to gauge its success, but Times editors said they are encouraged by the interest in the page by other media and journalism schools. The initial challenge has been getting the page noticed while marketing dollars are tight. Plans are to distribute reprints on campuses in the fall. NEXT is also an important part of the newspaper's Newspaper in Education program.

Vesely described himself as a fan of the vitality the NEXT writers bring to the section. Besides appearing occasionally elsewhere in the opinion section, the writers have been welcome at editorial page staff meetings with the governor, the Seattle mayor, and other elected officials.

"They are not going away," Vesely says. "NEXT is integrated into what the opinion and commentary pages are going to be."

Check out NEXT at www.seattletimes.com/next

Kate Riley is an associate Masthead editor and Editorial writer for The Seattle Times. E-mail [e-mail]