News Detective: Reading the Newspaper
I’m addicted to news.
Every morning, I listen to National Public Radio for a while before I get up. I keep listening while I get dressed. Then, I read the local paper at home. When I get to work, I read the New York Times online. I check CNN.com and other news sites a few times a day, sometimes when I’m in the middle of writing a sentence.
I monitor RSS feeds (ongoing news updates) from half a dozen different news sources throughout the day, taking extra care to read about new developments in health and science. I also subscribe to more than 10 magazines, which I am constantly struggling to keep up with, and I occasionally stop by newsstands to check out what I’m missing.
My favorite day is Sunday because that’s when the New York Times arrives on my doorstep. The Sunday paper is deliciously fat. It bursts with information, insight, and analysis. I make a cup of tea, put together some breakfast, and sit down to read. There are so many interesting articles in the newspaper, it sometimes takes me all week to get through the whole thing.
As much as I rely on the Internet for news, I am loyal to the printed page. I love sitting outside with the paper, sitting at a cafe with the paper, sitting at the breakfast table with the paper, or taking the paper with me to read snippets of news on buses and airplanes.
For some reason, I always read more of an article when I’m reading it in print. Online, I rarely get through more than the first few paragraphs before my eyes start to get tired.
Of course, I do a lot of writing for the Internet, and I use the World Wide Web to look up researchers and find background information for my articles. If it weren’t for computers, you wouldn’t be reading this at all.
I agree that newspapers aren’t as necessary as they used be, but I hope they continue to survive. Without them, Sunday mornings would never be the same.—Emily Sohn