Did you tell all the different shops about your need to have a bike that will handle dirt, gravel, and roads? Because if you did, the guy who recommended the Newest is a moron. Handling that sort of a terrain variation will necessarily take a compromise on the bike's capabilities for some part of that - ie, a good bike on road will be a little sketchy on gravel, and a bike that handles gravel well will be slow on road.

That said, it looks like you're in the same boat as me - I'm looking for a commuter to replace my beater, and I want it to be relatively fast on pavement but able to handle some rougher stuff too. It seems to me that you could use anything from a beefier cyclocross bike through a tougher hybrid. There are a ton of cyclocross threads, but Surly's Cross-check, Kona's Jake, and Jamis' Nova seem to be very popular.

A bike I'm looking at that I think might also be useful for your needs would be Fisher's Kaitai (or it's bigger brothers). It has a suspension fork with a lockout, but it looks to be a pretty stiff fork, so hopefully not too mushy. Also, it looks like it comes with tech that makes it very road-worthy, like larger chainrings and 700C rims that come stock with 38mm tires.

I agree with your assessment, if you're thinking of using this thing offroad much at all, I wouldn't get a racy road bike, and I wouldn't get the skinnier-tire hybrids with little clearance for larger tires, fenders, etc.

As for the two you have selected, I don't like the spoke count on the Trek, if you're planning on taking it offroad. The Specialized cross bike looks pretty decent, if you want drop bars.

If you want a 'cross bike, check some of the archived threads and try out some other manufacturers.