For Two Months, I Got My News From Print Newspapers.

Farhad Manjoo writing for the NY Times:

In January, after the breaking-newsiest year in recent memory, I decided to travel back in time. I turned off my digital news notifications, unplugged from Twitter and other social networks, and subscribed to home delivery of three print newspapers — The Times, The Wall Street Journal and my local paper, The San Francisco Chronicle — plus a weekly newsmagazine, The Economist.

I have spent most days since then getting the news mainly from print, though my self-imposed asceticism allowed for podcasts, email newsletters and long-form nonfiction (books and magazine articles). Basically, I was trying to slow-jam the news — I still wanted to be informed, but was looking to formats that prized depth and accuracy over speed.

It has been life changing. Turning off the buzzing breaking-news machine I carry in my pocket was like unshackling myself from a monster who had me on speed dial, always ready to break into my day with half-baked bulletins.

I actually thought about going to paper newspaper delivery a few months back and put out a tweet poll seeing if anyone else is doing it:

Not surprisingly, most people get their news online and I honestly didn’t want a daily delivery, which I know will end up with unread papers lying everywhere. So I decided to completely cancel all my newspaper subscriptions, subscribe to one weekly magazine (Bloomberg Businessweek), unfriend everyone on Facebook, and then just ignore it. If something important happens I’m sure I’ll hear about it.

From tuning out all the noise I’ve noticed a difference, but the biggest is how little knowing the news actually matters. I’d argue locally it matters more, but my local paper’s website​ is so bad I don’t want to waste my time.