In many ways, Steve Kolowich fits the profile of today's college students to a "T." He is bright, outspoken, self-confident and eschews print newspapers in favor of Web sites. He's concerned about where the country's headed and even about American democracy.

The Bowdoin College senior also is a living, breathing oxymoron.

Kolowich will be a co-editor of the Bowdoin Orient newspaper in the fall. He's our intern this summer at the Kennebec Journal and Morning Sentinel. And he plans to enter journalism full-time in 2008, despite having some big reservations about his chosen profession.

"I feel like you have to love doing it to get into it knowing that, at least for a while, it's not going to make you rich by any means," Kolowich said of reporting and writing for newspapers and Web sites.

Kolowich, the kind of young man who calls me "Mister" from time to time and wears white cotton T-shirts under his polo shirts, knows plenty of classmates who plan careers in investment banking, law and business. They're thinking about financial security and career stability. Kolowich isn't, at least not so much.

To some degree, Kolowich's career path was genetically predetermined. His father, Michael Kolowich, started his career as a television-news producer decades ago. Now he owns and runs a video-production company in Massachusetts. That is, when the elder Kolowich isn't working for Republican Mitt Romney's presidential campaign, which he does a lot these days.

Kolowich grew up in Concord, Mass. and attended the local private school, Concord Academy. He describes himself as a good high school student, one who excelled at writing, was fair at mathematics, and found ways to avoid tough science courses like physics (he chose earth science instead).

When it came time to consider colleges, Kolowich's first instinct was to find one with a good journalism department. But his father advised him to think more broadly, to consider a liberal-arts education. So Kolowich wound up choosing Bowdoin, where he majors in governmental relations and minors in philosophy.

Still, his heart is in writing. Like all good reporters, he enjoys meeting the people he interviews, and he loves talking to the journalists he's getting to know in both of our newsrooms.

"The people here have been just incredibly helpful this summer," said Kolowich, who begins his third week on the job today.

Kolowich, like many young people considering careers in journalism, is confused and even a bit torn over his future. He reads about massive job cuts at some of the nation's largest and most prestigious daily newspapers. Television network news stations face equally daunting competitive "challenges."

Yet, in so many ways, the future of American journalism depends on people like Steve Kolowich, not just as journalists but as consumers too. If young adults don't buy the idea that objective journalism and reporting are vital to an informed citizenry, which is at the heart of our democracy, then we are in trouble.

For decades, the trend was that young people in their late teens and 20s read newspapers and watched television news only occasionally. But as they registered to vote, started families, bought homes and began paying taxes, they started newspaper subscriptions and took local news much more seriously.

There are indications that, sometime around 2000, this started to change. There are so many Web sites, niche publications, TV and radio stations, and daily and weekly newspapers out there these days that young adults tend to treat the news scene like a huge buffet spread. They move from steam tray to steam tray, looking for news wherever they choose and whenever they are so motivated.

Kolowich said that does describe his friends' reading habits, and his to some degree. He reads the CNN and New York Times Web sites, and checks out the Drudge Report (online) regularly. He obviously reads the Bowdoin Orient and its Web site diligently.

"Obviously, I'm aware that it's watershed point in the industry," he said. "Print newspapers are going extinct, it seems, in general.

"Some people question whether journalism as a profession is also going extinct, with citizen journalists and bloggers and all the Internet stuff," he continued. "Young people don't read newspapers anymore. I sometimes read the newspaper but my friends and I go online more because you can do that on your own terms."

Kolowich's belief, like mine, is that Americans deep down value having community journalists out there to tell them that their taxes are going up, that local employers are laying off people, and who won the high school basketball game the night before.

But he isn't betting his life on it. Kolowich will start his career as a journalist, but he's leaving future options open. Journalism will help him become a better writer, interviewer and public speaker.

"Luckily," he said, "journalism is good practice for other things."

Eric Conrad is executive editor of the Kennebec Journal and Morning Sentinel. He can be reached at econrad@centralmaine.com.