Conventional wisdom has it that newspapers are a dying breed. Buggy whips in an automotive age. Vacuum tubes smashed by microchips. An anachronism. Sheets of dead trees swept into oblivion by the winds of technology.

But like much conventional wisdom, it is a figment of mass hallucination. It ain't so.

I recently came across a column by Amanda Bennett, editor of The Inquirer in Philadelphia, which aptly addressed this mythology. She asked her newspaper's research department to provide statistics setting the record straight as it related to her newspaper in her community. She then wrote about her paper's comparative strength in the Philadelphia area.

Figuring it better to steal a good idea than to originate a poor one, I asked Dean White, the head of the Review-Journal's promotions department, which handles market research for the company, to provide me with data on how the R-J stacks up here in Southern Nevada.

Most of the data predates the recent change in the joint operating agreement that ended the publication of the Las Vegas Sun as a separately delivered afternoon newspaper.

The data is for the combined circulation of the morning Review-Journal and the afternoon Sun.

So, when someone tells you no one reads newspapers any more, consider this research data: Two out of three of the Las Vegas metropolitan area's adults read the Las Vegas Review-Journal and/or Sun. Over the course of five weekdays and four Sundays, the papers are read by 803,100 adults, which equals 66 percent of the total number of adults in Clark County.

But, but, but ... you might blubber, people say they get most of their news from television. Well, according to Mr. White's numbers: More people get their news from the Review-Journal and Sun and Reviewjournal.com than from the 6 p.m. and 11 p.m. newscasts on the top three TV stations combined. Yes, combined. You can read more than one newspaper but it is hard to watch two TV broadcasts at once. Simple physics.

More than 471,600 adults tell us they read the daily R-J /Sun or visited the R-J Web site on the previous day. That accounts for 38.8 percent of the adult population in Clark County. In comparison, the Monday through Friday 6 p.m. and 11 p.m. viewership of the three main TV stations (KVBC-TV, Channel 3; KLAS-TV, Channel 8; and KTNV-TV, Channel 13) adds up to only 139,000 adults, which accounts for only 11.4 percent.

Well, radio is constantly with people in their homes and cars, surely ...

More people, according to research, are reached by the Review-Journal or Sun than by drive-time radio news on all local radio stations combined. Only 256,200, or 21 percent, of adults listen to at least one of the 34 local radio stations during morning drive time and only 210,900, or 17 percent, listen during evening drive time.

Surely more and more people are now getting their news from the Internet. I can't argue with you on that.

I recently spoke to a half-dozen graduate-level journalism students at UNLV and not one of them subscribed to the newspaper -- depressing as that is. But every one said they read the newspaper online. Most on a daily basis.

In fact, reviewjournal.com is the No. 1 Web site in our area. Each month, reviewjournal.com is visited by 184,412 local adults, which accounts for 15 percent of our adult population, according to surveys.

Whether by dead trees or via electrons, news is news and the most popular source continues to be the newspaper, whether you are in Philadelphia or Las Vegas.

Sure there are problems in the newspaper industry. Problems with circulation. Problems with credibility. Problems with free flowing and divisive political animus. But the problems have less to do with competition from other media than from a widespread apathy and a general lack of appetite for serious, hard news.

And that is not a problem just for newspapers editors and publishers, but for democracy and our future.

Thomas Mitchell is editor of the Review-Journal. He writes about the role of the press, free speech and public access to government information. His phone number is 383-0261 and e-mail is tmitchell@reviewjournal.com.