Old School News

Buying a newspaper these days seems like a waste of money.

 

Whoa, hold on now! Suck back that groan. I’m not about to go on about the media being ‘all lies’ or ‘controlled by evil old white people’. Even if it is, it doesn’t bother me all that much.

 

What I mean is, why spend £2 on a dirty-finger-making paper tablecloth that you’ve then got to lug around until you find a bin large enough to stuff it in? You can get all your news online now, and to be well-informed one just has to visit different sites.

 

That was the plan, anyway.

 

But what I find myself doing more and more these days is spend five minutes on the actual article and then an hour reading all the comments and arguments below it.

 

The comments are rarely interesting or informative. They seldom make me look at the issue from a different perspective. They annoy me. I follow a thread of arguments and trollish digs at a commenter’s intelligence, roll my eyes whenever someone calls someone else “racist”, and generally ignore the voice in my head asking: Why the fuck don’t you just stop reading and move on?

 

But I don’t.

 

I understand the reasons for the ‘comments box’ or whatever they call it. If you bought a paper and read it and wanted to discuss a particular article you would have to walk up to someone and say, “Hey, did you see that thing in the paper?”

 

And what a let-down if they then turn and say, “No.”

 

But the current situation just seems like a lot of people yelling their opinions at each other with their fingers stuck in their ears.

 

With all this access to news I find myself reading less actual news. I have never been as ill-informed about global events as I am right this moment.

 

So tomorrow it all ends!

 

Tomorrow I’ll pick up a Guardian, a Daily Mail, and a Plymouth Herald. Please don’t judge me for my choices, I am an immigrant and don’t know which paper makes me look like which class member.

 

I’ll sit down with a cup of coffee and read them without a bunch of shouty people shouting about it all.

 

And if I’ve got something I really need to say about it I’ll put pen to paper and send in a letter.