Most of what you’re going to read today is pointless.
We spend hours consuming news because we want to be well informed. But is that time well spent? News is by definition something that doesn’t last. And as news has become easier to distribute and cheaper to produce, the quality has decreased.
Rarely do we stop to ask ourselves questions about what we consume: Is this important? Is this going to stand the test of time — say, in a week or in a year? Is the person writing this someone who is well informed on the issue?
“[W]e’re surrounded by so much information that is of immediate interest to us that we feel overwhelmed by the never-ending pressure of trying to keep up with it all.”
— Nicolas Carr
There are several problems with the way we consume news today:
First, the speed of news delivery has increased. We used to have to wait to get a newspaper or gossip with people in our town to get our news, but not anymore. Thanks to alerts, texts, and other interruptions, news find us almost the minute it’s published.
Second, the costs to produce news have dropped significantly. Some people write 10 or more blog posts a day for major newspapers. It’s nearly impossible to write something thoughtful on one topic, let alone 10. Over the course of a year, this works out to writing 2400 articles (assuming four weeks of vacation). The fluency of the person you’re getting your news from in the subject they’re covering is near zero. As a result, you’re filling your head with surface opinions on isolated topics. Because the costs have dropped to near zero, there is a lot of competition.
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