Have you
noticed that we have limited imagination of great people from the history;
about how they looked? We come across only a few pictures of them every time
and hence we tend to develop an image about them in our mind, which sometimes seems
injustice.
For
example, here is a picture of Albert Einstein. When we think of Albert
Einstein, most of the time we remember his white disheveled hair. How about
this for your ‘memory’?
Many of
us have lost the habit of reading daily newspapers due to many reasons. One
major reason is the convenience of ‘news apps’ and portals. If you use Android
phone or Edge browser, it shows latest news at the bottom of the page. We are
able to scroll through the news and get updated. Plus, if you use any social
media platform, it is impossible to remain disconnected with latest major news
whether in our country or globally. But, this has a pitfall.
The other
day, while scrolling through news headlines on my mobile browser, I came across
a news where a man had killed someone from his family. I tried to avoid going
into details, but the second time the same news was shown, I opened the details
and found that some laborer (manual worker) had killed someone from his family.
Now, is that really the kind of “news” I would bother to read? In a typical
newspaper, such news get featured on internal pages, like page# 4-5. National
news appear on front page for a reason. If we have less time, we can also only
read the first and last pages, in order to do catch up with major news. We normally
do not bother to read localized crime news. But “internet news” often shows us
such news without discrimination.
I know
that we have options to choose what kind of news we want to read first, but if
we open our browser many times a day, it is likely that the priority news would
get exhausted and hence the service provider would start showing us such
mundane localized crime news.
Newspapers
provide more advantages other than arranging news as per priority and relevance
which I told about. Newspapers are typically published after midnight and hence
they have advantage of being able to do quality reporting based on the findings
gathered all through the day. Internet news, on the other hand, often show us
in a “developing piece” mode, where editors keep adding to the piece all
through the day, starting with almost only a headline. Internet news also
breaks a news into 10 different articles, in order to engage users more, which
the newspapers would not do in their publication.
Reading
newspapers has one more advantage that we can get through all the “important
news” in those 30 minutes of time we are reading it and within those many
pages. A good newspaper will never leave any important development through the
previous day and hence can be relied upon, unlike internet news which cannot be
relied since it is almost unmanageable to cover in a set of time.
Therefore,
from all angles, reading newspapers is much better idea as compared to reading
internet news. But, reading hardcopies of newspapers results in trees being cut
for making paper and hence this is one evil side of it. This can however be
overcome if we read daily newspapers “electronically”. I am talking about “e-paper”.
Therefore,
I think the best thing to do is to read “e-paper” daily. This will save our
time, let us have a disciplined routine, avoid us from toxicity of random internet
news, and even be environment friendly. I have started reading an e-paper daily
and hope to continue it as a habit.
What do
you think?
- Rahul
