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Thank the Web for democratizing the absurd. Case in point: Slate magazine's latest euphemisms audio contest, in which language columnist Barbara Wallraff asked her podcast listeners for their favorite new ways of saying "kick the bucket."

Such a goofy exercise would have been laborious to bring off in print, with no easy way for demented, insomniac listeners to shoot off late night e-mail. Moreover, the audio version of "Where old people go after Florida" has a wicked spark that would be lacking in print.

So in these days of wicked podcasts, blogs, wikis and other e-whatnots, is print "losing its long fight with entropy?"

To judge from the Washington, DC, subways, maybe so. Based on the number of copies of the once-essential Washington Post that are not left littering seats, one would have to conclude that print is at the very least on life support, perhaps with DNR orders.

In the Post's place is a now a free Post-published throwaway called Express. Here's the breezy way the paper's marketing department describes its new creation for potential advertisers: "The cost-efficient way to ride face-to-face with Washington's diverse, college-educated, white-collar, time-pressed adults--the trendsetters and info-magnets who are short on excess time but not on discretionary income."

In other words, Express is one of the world's great newspapers reduced to a "See Spot Run" level for monied 20-somethings with attention deficit disorder.

The Post is hardly alone in worrying about being "promoted to glory." Nationwide, daily newspaper circulation fell an average of 2.8 percent over a six-month period ending in September, according to just-released figures from the Newspaper Association of America. Sunday circulation fell 3.4 percent nationwide over the same time period.

Time for print to celebrate its "Heaven birthday?"

Actually, no. Painful as it may be for people raised on eight-column layouts to accept downsized newspapers with the intellectual rigor of My Weekly Reader, the existence of Express indicates that even the iPod generation wants ink on its fingers.

At the recent Folio Conference in New York, Betsy Frank, the new Chief Research and Insights Officer at Time, Inc., assured the magazine-bred attendees that print is not dead. "People are not giving up their magazines," she said.

But print is only one of many flavors of media these days, and the smart publisher has to offer much more than vanilla and chocolate. Frank said that today's "selective, impatient, active" readers live by the motto, "I want what I want when I want it."

With so many different ways to get information, publishers cannot assume "If you build it they will come," she said. Instead, "if they come, you had better have it ready."

That is, print may not be "eating the grass by the roots." It is more like someone in assisted living, watching the new and younger residents with a bit of envy and suspicion, but still keeping its seat at the dinner table.

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