Out of jeopardy as we mark National Newspaper Week?

Late Sunday night, nestled in the cool lap of leather luxury, I fell asleep in my Big Comfy Chair as the Sunday Night Football game ambled on to conclusion.

Awakening in that same chair in the wee small hours of the morning, I found the TV still blaring away on Channel 13, and inexplicably Alex Trebek soliciting questions to Double Jeopardy answers.

Barely coherent, I perked right up, however, upon hearing Trebek reveal the Final Jeopardy category. As the clock neared 1 a.m. On a Monday morning.

Smiling, almost smirking at the camera, Trebek announced the final question would involve newspapers. But he couldn't resist adding, "Are they a dying breed? We'll find out after this ..."

Wait a second there, Alex, this is National Newspaper Week. The 74th observance thereof (Oct. 5-11). No time for you to be making any snide comment, especially when it has nothing to do with the question and answer (which ultimately involved the British tabloid The Sun altering its masthead for a historic occasion).

After all, did we make snide remarks about how your once stylishly bold mustache has descended into a bland, nearly 50-shades-of-gray lip liner upon its recent re-emergence?

So, Trebek, as we celebrate National Newspaper Week 2014 (cue all the parades, confetti, cake and piņatas) and its theme of "Newspapers: The Foundation of Vibrant Communities," we take exception to your dying breed comment.

In fact, it smacks of uninformed remarks heard here in the post-IBM closing days, characterizing the Greencastle situation as the "death of a corporate town."

Yay, that's right, never let the facts stand in the way of a good story.

So here we are in 2014, a couple of years past the desperate dying newspaper hysteria. And these are the facts as the Newspaper Association of America reports them:

-- The vast majority of U.S. adults, 164 million (69 percent) to be exact, read newspaper media content in print or online in a typical week, or access it on mobile devices in a typical month.

-- The majority (59 percent) of young adults, ages 18-24, read newspaper media content in print or online in a typical week, or access it on mobile devices in a typical month.

-- The mobile newspaper audience is growing fast, up 58 percent in an average month in the past two years. That totals 34 million adults.

-- The mobile audience skews young. Median age of an adult newspaper mobile user not surprisingly is 17 years younger than the average print reader.

-- Those who are newspaper mobile-exclusive -- that is, those who access newspaper content on mobile devices only -- are younger by four more years (with a median adult age of 33). That audience grew by 83 percent in the past two years.

-- Overall, the total newspaper media audience in a typical week (excluding mobile) dipped two percent, a change in line with TV media and even less than radio. When the mobile audience is included, the decline in total newspaper audience is cut by more than half to less than one percent.

So while, many folks no longer get their fingers ink-stained devouring all the news that's fit to print, it is still newspapers providing their information and local news coverage, whether in hand or online.

But to remain out of jeopardy, it's important that newspapers continue to find other ways of disseminating their product and maximizing revenue streams. You can't give away your product and survive.

Apple doesn't do that. Coke doesn't do that. Newspapers shouldn't either.

Meanwhile, another timely local newspaper survey reveals the following:

-- The average amount of time spent with each edition of a local community newspaper is 38.95 minutes.

-- The percentage who read all or most of each paper is 73 percent.

-- The most frequently read topic remains local news.

-- Adults who rely on community newspapers as their primary source for local news is 51.8 percent (nearly four times more than the next nearest medium and 10 times greater than the Internet).

-- Those who believe their community newspaper's coverage of local news is good to excellent is 75 percent.

Meanwhile, when the Super Bowl is played again this coming February, 49 percent of U.S. households will be glued to the TV. Yet during that same timeframe, 70 percent of those households will be reading a newspaper.

But perhaps my favorite newspaper factoid remains this: The number of printed words on the front page of a daily newspaper exceeds all those spoken in an entire 30-minute network newscast.

Yep, that's the way it is ...

So who's really in jeopardy now, Trebek? Not sure we ever found out like you promised with that final question/answer.

But before we go, in regard to that final "Jeopardy" question: The Sun changed its nameplate to "The Son" in honor of the July 22, 2013 royal birth of Prince George, son of William and Kate.

Yikes. We can only hope journalism like that is indeed a dying breed.