‘For two months, I got my news from print newspapers. Here’s what I learned’

For Two Months, I Got My News From Print Newspapers. Here’s What I Learned.

Now I am not just less anxious and less addicted to the news, I am more widely informed (though there are some blind spots). And I’m embarrassed about how much free time I have — in two months, I managed to read half a dozen books, took up pottery and (I think) became a more attentive husband and father. ...

(T)he prominence of commentary over news online and on cable news feels backward, and dangerously so. It is exactly our fealty to the crowd — to what other people are saying about the news, rather than the news itself — that makes us susceptible to misinformation.

 

I read that thanks to a link on Twitter, which seems ironic. It was really good though. I'd like to do what he did.

 

I think it would be really tough to do with sports, though.

 

For no good reason, I'll take the contrarian view on this, and suggest that it reads like a slightly smarter AJ Jacobs lifestyle stunt.

Slow down! Disconnect! Stop and smell the (p)roses!

Common sense masquerading as Luddite radicalism.

Written for exactly the audience who wants to hear it, only to be ignored by the audience who needs to read it.

 

Some of journalism's downfall in terms of general reputation has been at least partly from its own hands. But make no mistake, social media masquerading as news sources hasn't helped one damn bit, either.

 

We subscribe to "The Week," which is largely a monument to plagiarism (but they attribute!), but keeps us relatively informed in an efficient manner. It also points you to the commentary that week that got everyone talking, so you can seek it out.

For a while, a few years ago, I was studiously reading A1 of the New York Times every single day. But I don't think that's a great way to stay informed - there is a lot of soft news on the NYT front. A lot of really important news ends up on the Nation and World fronts. Also, if you rely on print for your news, you do tend to miss the Outrage of the Day story that everyone is screeching about for a few hours. Which is fine by me, mostly, but it can be strangely disorienting when I come on here and someone like YF thinks something is a huge story and it hasn't entered my orbit.

There's simply no way you can follow a sport through the daily print newspaper, if you care about more than the local teams. Not anymore. The Chicago Tribune doesn't even run NBA and NHL box scores, and college basketball games outside of the Big Ten might get a sentence some days. Roger Banister's death merited the last brief deep inside the section. If you use the daily newspaper to try to follow a league, you will not know the names of 80 percent of the players in the NFL, NBA or NHL.

Anyway, to the main point, when it comes to staying efficiently informed about the general interest news, the morning print edition and weekly newsmagazines are absolutely the way to go. Let the experts curate it for you, and stop chasing rabbits all day long.

 

WSJ much better than Times if you want to know what happened the previous day, although I read both every morning (on iPad, although using their respective features allowing you to read the paper like it (sort of) appears in print). Times front is often too opinionated (even in news stories), too feature-y, and too long.

I also read the morning’s WaPo (in print) at night, albeit more for Metro and Sports. Still like the agate page—no more efficient way to get all the baseball box scores. (Although they don’t get the late scores, and it’s a bit weird when they print them a day later.)

 

And also get the Economist, which is a good way to keep up on International news if you don’t have time for it during the week.

 

I found it interesting that the Times has 3.6 million subscribers. Seventy-five percent are electronic only.

 

This speaks well to The Athletic's model, for whatever that's worth.

Also The Week, in my experience, doesn't pay what it says it's going to pay for its lifts. Just a warning for my fellow freelancers to keep your head up there.

 

Although problem with The Athletic’s current app is that there is no way, so far as I can tell, to see box scores or short summaries of all games. It still doesn’t really do a good job of replicating some of the best features of newspaper.

 

I tried to convince ESPN to make a standalone site for scores and really good, unconventional game stories called "The Results," divided by sport. My proposal did not meet receptive ears, but I still think there's a place for quality game coverage. I think there are lots of people, like you, who still care about the score. Maybe The Athletic will pick up that slack eventually.