Banner predicts that young adults will become network-news watchers as they age and settle down. Karen Shuey, a senior journalism major at Temple University, disagrees.

"My generation will never go back to traditional news sources," says Shuey, 21, from Lebanon, Pa. "TV news will eventually die out."

The networks, she says, "focus too much on human-interest stories. They're too consumed by their own interests and their ownership to report controversial issues."

Easy as it is to blame the state of network news on, say, The Daily Show, it wouldn't be fair, says the show's executive producer.

"If young people find that we're the most appealing way to get news, that speaks to everyone else's failure, not our success," notes D.J. Javerbaum. At 35, he's three years younger than the median age of his program's viewers.

"As I see it, we have no obligation to have any kind of journalistic integrity. As comedians, we need to have comedic integrity."

Politically, The Daily Show is no joke.

According to a Pew Research Center study, one in five 18-to-29-year-olds reported regularly getting news about the 2004 presidential campaign from late-night comedy shows - up 12 percent over the 2000 race.

Moreover, the '04 numbers were almost even with those for traditional news sources.

Kathleen Jamieson, director of Penn's Annenberg Policy Center and coauthor of the just-released Unspun: Finding Facts in a World of Disinformation, is a major Stewart fan.

"He's smart. He makes me laugh. He's very good at tracking inconsistency and hyprocrisy in politics. I've written books about the problems of tactical coverage of politics by reporters. He does it in three minutes."

Or, as the University of Delaware's Young puts it: "He does better in 22 minutes criticizing the norms of journalism than I do in a semester. I should hate him."

Traditionally, people have gleaned political information from nontraditional news sources such as comedy, Jamieson says.

For young adults, funny is the spoonful of sugar that helps the medicine go down. In Jamieson's words, "they get information in places they're willing to go."

Case in point: Matthew Kolasa, 19, a Penn junior from Princeton majoring in philosophy and politics, watches The Daily Show "chiefly for the laughs," but learns something, too.

"Within his political satire, Stewart makes really interesting points," Kolasa says. "He can make an argument with such smartness and wit. I think the U.S. senators could take a lesson from him."

Occasionally, The Daily Show makes political news: Republican Sen. John McCain announced his '04 presidential candidacy on the show. John Kerry's first interview on the Swift boat controversy was with Stewart.

Despite snippets of real news, however, rest assured The Daily Show is in no danger of going straight. Executive producer Javerbaum compares it to eating an entire pizza, with a spinach topping.

"You can kid yourself that you're getting your veggies and you're healthy. In reality, we do have veggies, but we also have lots of cheese and low-grade flour. We make no bones about it."