Why I read the news in print

An old-fashioned habit that makes sense for me

Aug 23, 2022

A few months ago, I spent a weekend at a hotel in San Jose with my family. Hotels happen to be one of the few places that still routinely stock daily print newspapers. On one Saturday morning, I picked up a free copy of the New York Times. I learned more from the news that day than I had in weeks.

Now, I had already been reading the New Yorker and the Economist in print for years — I started back in high school. After my experience in San Jose, I recently added the Sunday New York Times to the list. I’m even thinking about subscribing to the daily Financial Times print edition.

As I travel around Los Angeles for work and personal reasons, I always carry magazines or sections from the newspaper in my backpack. If I have a few minutes to take a break at work, I pull out the paper and read. I’ve recently been investigating the seemingly anachronistic pleasure I find in print media (as any artist would investigate their daily habits). In the world of the internet, why do I keep going back to paper?

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Print is finite.

It has a definitive beginning and end. Once I finish a particular article or section, I’m done with it for the day. The informational loop feels closed, and my mind is now free to go back to other work. Online, there’s a sense that it’s never over, that news is constantly happening, and there’s always more to know. Which is objectively true. But our brains can’t process the entire 24-hour news cycle anyways. Instead, as we read on our screens, one article leads to another… and another. One tweet or TikTok with “important” information turns into an hour of doom-scrolling.

Print eliminates that possibility. It gives you a few articles on a subject, and that’s it. Maybe you missed the breaking news… but was it really that important? If it were, it’d likely be in tomorrow’s paper. Or next week’s. It’s easy enough — and mentally freeing, in fact — to wait that extra day or week.

Plus, you gotta save time to do other stuff in the day… like work? Or sleep. Or maybe read A BOOK (also in print, preferably).

You don’t only read what you think you want to read

I’ve been pleasantly surprised at reading the Style section of the Times. Or the fashion editions published by New York Times Magazine. I tend to read more business and economic news, with a sprinkling of arts and leisure (I get enough arts in my life as it). But I’ve enjoyed learning about fashion, design, and the people behind it all.

When you read news on the internet, whether it is algorithmically driven or not, you’re predisposed to reading things you already want to read. The chance of finding an article you didn’t know you wanted to read but then did and found it interesting… is almost 0%. In a newspaper or magazine, it’s totally different. The article you might want to read is next to a section on an unrelated subject. Thus, the chance of being surprised or discovering written or visual material you didn't previously seek out is much higher.

There’s also a unique satisfaction to seeing beautiful magazine and newspaper layouts on the page — an art to how the written word and images are organized visually. The Styles section is full of this exquisite layout design.

Making it a ritual (and keeping it in that box)

There’s something old and profound and generational about reading the newspaper over a cup of coffee. I’ve done that a lot more recently. Maybe it’s because I want to feel like an elitist old man. I hope not.

I think it’s my way of connecting to the intellectual part of myself, the person who always wants to be in school. The person who wants to stay in touch with what’s happening around him but doesn’t want the weight of all of it to overwhelm him. I can read for an hour in the morning or on the weekend. Find a section or topic that interests me and devour it. Maybe I take another fifteen minutes to follow my curiosity with the article on the adjacent page…

I don’t think that you NEED to read everything in print. I learn a lot from online-only publications and search engines. The internet is a damn gift. But it feels nice to turn it off sometimes — I recommend it.