Week 3.1: I Paid for Good News [Score +2]

A mentor gave me some advice years ago that I haven’t explicitly taken until just this week: he recommended that I subscribe to a good national newspaper, like the New York Times, and read it once a week. He said it would broaden my perspective of the larger world and make me a more informed citizen and professional.

I can now say I took his advice, and he was right.

In less literal terms, I’ve been making my way closer to the full realization of this advice in other ways as I’ve gotten older, i.e., by becoming a devoted NPR listener, but more than ever in the last 12 months.

While after most presidential elections the news cycle returns to a comparatively more “normal” pace, this year has been an exception. I had hoped for relief from the frantic nature of it, but that release hasn’t happened. And now, though we are more than two months past the inauguration, I don’t see the pattern changing any time soon.

The frenetic last year has given me a greater appreciation for solid, fact-checked journalism. I’ve learned to pay closer attention to sources I trust.

And as a result, I’ve also paid better attention to their reporting of events and stories outside of politics (what relief!). After hitting the New York Times paywall multiple times, prevented from reading an article by Margaret Atwood about the lasting impact of The Handmaid’s Tale or something equally as enticing, I decided now was the perfect time to take that old advice and pay for the good stuff: a Sunday home-delivery subscription of a real, printed newspaper.

On my first delivery day, I repeatedly checked the mailbox to see if my paper had been delivered. You know you’re an adult when the sight of a thickly rolled newspaper in a pale blue plastic bag excites you.

View fullsize

An adult is exactly what I felt like as I unrolled that paper and sat down to read the first section with my lunch.

And that first section is all I was able to get through that day. I made it through the second section the next day. Then the third a couple days later. It took me a full week to see every headline and read each marginally interesting story that caught my eye.

How is a person supposed to keep up with it? And this is just one day’s paper!

I’m not giving up after just one week, but I think the novelty of this is going to wear off quickly. New York Times, I have the greatest respect for you and so appreciate the job you do for us, but I’m not devoted enough to the news to keep up with this amount of content each week. It’s a big commitment, and my books are feeling neglected.

I will probably do a very Millennial thing and opt down to digital-only access. Now, where’s my book?

Score:

• Did something outside my routine: +1
• Did something entirely new: +1