Now that I am biking to work pretty much daily—rain or shine—I rarely get the opportunity to choose between Metro and NOW, a choice made all the more exciting by the top-of-the-escalator brawls between the papers' vendors.

But occasionally I pick up a BostonNow just to see how it's coming along. "Blog" content has increased a good deal since the first couple of weeks, as promised, and it is as atrocious as expected, though in sometimes unexpectedly boring ways.

Over at internet128 they thought my concern about the quality of content in BostonNow was misplaced. "We’re not talking about The Times v. The Telegraph," they wrote. But the truth is, Metro and Now have a combined circulation of half a million in a major metropolitan area. That's nothing to sneeze at.

And frankly, there's just no reason a daily newspaper—even a free daily newspaper—can't be intelligent and incisive somehow, sometimes. And furthermore, there's no reason it shouldn't be, and plenty of reasons it should.

But, having said this, I must admit I find NOW a mildly fascinating read now and again, not for the news so much, but as a sort of cultural artifact. The content, as unworthy of print as it is (more about which in a moment, you can be sure, my pretties) says something about how we communicate in different media, and maybe more importantly: why we have different media to communicate in in the first place.

I've written before and crankily about the "illusion of literacy," and BostonNow is just another case in point. What we have here, even in this most educated of American cities, is a false sense of literacy. We communicate by text to an unheard of degree these days, but mostly with prefabricated phrases strung together loosely for purely practical purposes. Me come. Me go. Me like. Me no like. Me want. Me no want. Ooga ooga.

What gives people the sense that this is anything anyone else would want to hear is that, actually, it's what the media's been force-feeding us for the past twenty years, at least, and you find a good deal of it on the internet, too.

Most American adults are able to read and write, at some level. Literacy rates in the USA are, depending on who you consult, 95.5 - 99.9%. But take a closer look.

According to the US Department of Education "as many as 21-23 percent - or some 40 to 44 million of the 191 million adults in this country - demonstrated skills in the lowest level of proficiency." (This figure has remained essentially static over the past decade.) But it's not the outright illiterate that interest me here. It's the functionally literate illiterates. What we consider acceptable—that is to say, normal—comprehension and communication skills nowadays is not up to snuff when we look at the rest of the so-called first world.

Some sobering statistics from The National Institute for Literacy:

The mean prose literacy scores of U.S. adults with primary or no education, ranked 14th out of 18 high-income countries;

The mean prose literacy scores of U.S. adults with some high school, but no diploma or GED, ranked 19th out of 19 high-income countries;

The mean prose literacy scores of U.S. adults with a high school diploma or GED (but no college), ranked 18th (tie) out of 19 countries;

The mean prose literacy scores of U.S. adults with 1-3 years of college, ranked 15th out of 19 countries; and

The mean prose literacy scores of U.S. adults with a bachelor's degree or higher, ranked 5th.

Well, fifth place ain't bad, anyway. The U.S. is like the Bode Miller of literacy.

My point is: though we're texting and emailing more, what could be considered functional literacy by the layman seems to be getting more and more basic. Backsliding into "ooga ooga" territory, in fact. And, face it, it's easier than ever in the U.S. to get by on "ooga ooga."

If you want proof, like I said, just pick up BostonNow.

Personally, whenever I read a newspaper I tend to go first to the op-eds. The AP stuff's all the same anyway, and AP style assures you'll get the gist skimming the first paragraph or two.

Op-eds are altogether more interesting. They're about perspectives, it's true, but they are also about perspective, period. You read certain op-ed columnists because they are original or insightful (James Carroll in The Globe is a good example), or you read them because they represent a worldview, a constellation of viewpoints, with which you're familiar, but they do so with a flare. You read them because they compellingly conform—either pro or con—to a cherished stereotype (the beloved Frank Rich in the New York Times or the self-parody that is Jeff Jacoby in The Globe, say).

Good op-eds are like good oratory. They capture the essence of something we ourselves may have found hard to articulate. And actually articulating what you think is self-evident is a lot harder than you might think, if you were to think about it at all. And then it's another big step to communicate thoughts not just accurately but compellingly. Clever people like to think they could do it if they so chose, or had the time, but in this they're like the couch potato who sits in front of the TV, watching the game, scratching himself and saying, "I could do that. I could do that. I could do that."

Newsflash: actually doing things is different from thinking you could do them. As obvious as that seems, it's something a lot of people have enormous difficulty grasping.

We all talk. We all read. We all write. So we take good talk, a good read, and good writing a bit for granted, I think. But it really is the difference between living in black and white and living in technicolor.

Discourse has been so devalued that many people don't seem to get that it's not merely about picking a side and reiterating its talking points and then proceeding to shout each other down.

Of course, in a democracy, the argument goes, we all have a right to our opinions. Which is great, as far as it goes. But the truth is, a simple show of hands will usually suffice. Articulating your opinion merely for the sake of articulating it or so that others may know you have it—or one at all—may be personally affirming, but it's not necessarily relevant to the discourse itself.

What may make it relevant as more than personal display and self-affirmation (which, again, are great as far as they go) is the clarity of thought, depth of insight, and eloquence with which it's rendered. The power and precision of the perfect phrase should not be underestimated.

Remember: in the beginning there was The Word. Writing/speaking is alchemy. It brings thoughts into being. Sometimes when someone says what we are thinking but cannot say, it gives us courage to act.

And we still live and die by words like "We hold these truths to be self-evident," and "I have a dream," and "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."

We can be humbled, shamed, wounded by words in ways blows can't match. In love, as the poets know, words are frighteningly powerful.

A turn of a phrase bores into our souls, and works on us in mysterious ways: "Unbeing dead isn't being alive" (e.e.cummings).

Not every pen is mightier than the sword. But words—the right words, and there's the rub—can change minds, can sway hearts, can move nations.

When "Ooga ooga" can accomplish the same end, which is clearly the case today, you know you're in trouble.

None of this is to say that I expected, or expect a paper like BostonNow to provide really high-quality content when crap content will do. I am fully aware that the paper's main purpose is to sell ad space. But the content so far has hardly achieved even "ooga ooga" status.

As BostonNow has begun running "blogger" content in its sad little half-page of "Dialogue," whenever I look at it I'm reminded of what Art Blakey said about opinions: they're like assholes—everybody's got one.

Recently we were treated to a blogger named Seanie's very sensible opinions on gay marriage. They were sensible, but not in any way insightful, unless you were looking into insight into Seanie, which, for various reasons, I found I wasn't. Maybe they should include little webcam photos of the bloggers with the blogger content. If the blogger's cute enough, I'd be totally interested in what he thinks.

Or take a new feature of BostonNOW I noticed in last weekend's edition: "What's on my iPod?" The idea is to "put your iPod on shuffle and tell us what happens." This strikes me as the perfect example of what BostonNow is, and if this is what was meant by "revolutionizing the newspaper," then sign me up with the red coats.

I mean, here's a random person (a certain Jenny Wolfson) with a bunch of random words about a bunch of random songs:

"This song reminds me of childhood." "I've seen [this band] live a couple times." "His lyrics have a good story to them." "His songs are funny, sad, and you can feel the emotion in his voice." "I get nostalgic listening to it." "This one always puts me in a good mood." "I am obsessed." "I like this song; I can almost hear myself screaming the lyrics to myself." (That's funny, it's coming in loud and clear to the rest of us.)

Now, I didn't know Jenny Wolfson before I read a list of random songs on her iPod, and I don't know her any better now that I have. Maybe that is knowing Jenny Wolfson, but I don’t know. Nor do I want to. Random person with random iPod on random play.

I don't know anything more about the songs on her iPod, either. Except that this one makes her giggle and that one gives her gas.

All of this Jenny Wolfsoniana I would fully expect to find on her MySpace page, if I were to visit it.  Of my own accord.  Which, of course, I would never have cause to do.  Which is my point.  It belongs there, on her litter-strewn stretch of internet, not here on mine.  And certainly not in the pages of my daily paper. 

Because these Jenny Wolfson nuggets are not news, insights, or opinions, are they? They're not happenings.  They're not relevant or engaging on any level—not even as artifacts in themselves, except as artifacts of Jenny Wolfson's inner-life, about which I can draw no conclusions and make no assumptions. It's worse than useless information.  It's second-hand useless information. I mean, it's Jenny Wolfson's useless information. What the hell do I want with it?(It might make a good band name.)

If I knew Jenny Wolfson, and surely someone must, this might make sense, but it would still be washed-up detritus on the already debris-strewn beach of my mind.

If you read this kind of thing, even idly in an idle moment, it's far worse than just letting your mind go blank, believe me.

You read it, you'll have to digest it somehow before you shit it out (unless, like swallowed bubble gum and maraschino cherries it stays in you forever). You find yourself falling automatically into two camps: pro-Jenny Wolfson's Random Playlist (Jenny Wolfson) or anti-Jenny Wolfson's Random Playlist (everybody else).

It’s that not-so-clever parody of opinions that is playing out in our culture today that is a form of merry nihilism. Jenny Wolfson’s Random iPod Playlist, Darfur, Sanjaya, gay marriage, The Further Adventures or Paris’s pussy. It’s all the same, really, at the end of the day, innit?

But let me tell you something:  you get to a certain age and that steady diet of schadenfreude we're all suckled on starts to sour.

It's a question of mental hygiene.  You gorge on junk just because it's there, eventually you'll turn into "a pudding," as my old friend and nemesis Gyöngy used to say.

I think it's instructive to acknowledge what we're willing to settle for in our public discourse. We get a certain gratification in seeing our low expectations of the world and our worst opinions of others confirmed, but it pales in comparison to the satisfaction of real, robust discourse on vital questions, something we are nowhere in our public culture currently engaged in.

It may sound too demanding, but the fact is, we at the pinnacle of Maslow's pyramid have every reason for and right to our high standards. I propose a newspaper reader's bill of rights. Every reasonably intelligent adult, when he picks up a paper, has the right:

To be intelligently informed of current issues and incidents in the world that affect us.

To be stimulated in debate, our genuine curiosity about the inner life and thought processes of others richly rewarded.

To be provoked to think differently—not through social pressure, but through the sheer elegance of the ideas we encounter.

To be free of Jenny Wolfson's useless information.

Instead what we get is the run-off and regurge at the bottom of the pyramid: breathing, food, water, sex, sleep, homeostasis, excretion. And I for one didn't crawl out of the slime and scratch and claw my way to self-actualization for that.