While some delight in having been first to learn of Michael Jackson’s death or hear about the man who married his pillow, I’ve never seen the appeal. For me, news websites often seem optimised to distract the bored, not to inform the healthily curious. A rapid news cycle coupled with perceived demand for breaking stories only encourages reporting of half-truths about live events, or coverage of items that aren’t really news at all, like snow in mid winter, or learning that Sarah Beeny is pregnant.
Since switching from a diet of web-based news to the digital paper format that The Times offers iPad users, a funny thing has happened: I’ve started reading the news again. Not just glancing through titles, skimming the first few paragraphs, scrolling to the comments section to imagine the people who post there in their underwear, then jumping aboard the hyperlink express, but actively reading. For the first time in years, I feel informed again.
I was delighted at developer Marco Arment’s plea that someone launch a news site reporting on last week’s news, where ‘mentioning any event that happened less than seven days ago is strictly prohibited’. Lengthening the news cycle provides a natural filter against the barrage of updates offered by live Web reporting. Following events in a digital newspaper format — where yesterday’s news is presented in a concise format that you can read from beginning to end — has made news reading productive and enjoyable; I now linger over content when it’s delivered each day instead of checking up on it like a virtual babysitter. It’s how it used to be. You know, when news was something you savoured. And paid for.
