PARTAKE THE AROMA OF NEW YORK POST: NO HOOK ON PHONICS

The saga of the ever failing New York Post is more than a continuing comedy. It's a reflection of the changing habits, styles and thought patterns of contemporary America.

Founded by Alexander Hamilton, the Post is America's oldest continuously published daily newspaper. It can be called "distinguished" in the past, "ridiculous" in the present, and "unpredictable" in the future.

The tabloid has now been rescued by Rupert Murdoch, the impresario of sensationalist and racially tinged journalism. In a shrinking newspaper market, the Post struggled to attract an audience with front page headlines like the classic "Headless Body in Topless Bar." This was the Murdoch style during his previous tenure at the Post, which ended five years ago when Murdoch bought a New York television station and had to relinquish the paper.

As to the future, Mr. Murdoch allows that the newspaper will be "cheeky," which must be comforting to those New York readers who do not want to be bothered with anything terribly substantial. Murdoch will bring back the Post's old editor, who had moved on to a higher creative calling as the television producer of "A Current Affair." That more than assures fulfillment of the "cheeky" pledge.

After Murdoch parted with the Post in 1988, it successively fell into the hands of a bankrupt developer, a deeply troubled debt collector and, most recently, a billionaire screwball named Abe Hirschfeld. Compared to them, Murdoch looks like William Allen White or William Cullen Bryant.

So for now the Post is rescued free to sensationalize and to arouse the anger of blue collar whites against their black neighbors all in the name of modern journalism and all with the blessing of the First Amendment.

We were once a nation of readers, and virtually every city of any consequence had more than one daily paper (St. Louis had three as late as the 1950s). We are now a nation of watchers, with many homes receiving 40 or more channels of video programming.

The broadcast media are the dominant communicators. Television is our national university of continuing education. An ever escalating percentage of high school graduates (I've been told the number is perhaps as high as 80 percent) never read a complete book after graduation. For the great majority of Americans, reading has become a lost art.

The decline of reading is both a cause and effect of the lost of "cultural literacy bemoaned by so many. Even in the computer age, a nation whose best and brightest forego the discipline and insights gained from extensive exposure to the printed word will suffer not only a loss in cultural and historical understanding, but in the long run be ill-equipped to compete in the information-based economies of the future.

Newspapers and general interest, mass circulation magazines are embedded in the national folklore, but now must work strenuously to define a role for themselves in a 21st century where people increasingly will lose the habit of reading as a source of information or entertainment.

The Post's strategy is to pitch its shrill message to the titillated and the troubled. Sex, scandal and scare are once again the grist for the Murdoch mill. It's a unique way for a newspaper to survive the decline of literacy: by reducing the literary content of journalism. With the Post there's no need to get "Hooked on Phonics." There's no need for "A,B,C,D,E,F,G." All you need is to look at the pictures and partake of the aroma.