After all of yesterday’s excitement, today felt downright tranquil. Here are a few notes from my second day of relying only on news I pay for.
- It’s really quiet out there. Maybe too quiet. With no high-drama break news stories — as well as, for me, a busy day of meetings and running around the city — I experienced something I haven’t felt in a while: a slow news day. And on days like this, it’s really tough to get a sense of “what’s going on right now” through the outlets I follow. App homepages aren’t updated all that often, and they all carry the same story.
- I’m reminded that there is more to newspapers than news. With little in the way of major breaking news, I did find myself reading more deeply through my NYT app. The feed feature, which allows you to follow topics and columnists, does a decent job (though I wish it had more topics) and surfaced a review of Mr. Inbetween that I probably wouldn’t have read otherwise while going to the World section reminded me of the old joy of the foreign news feature that ran on A3 when I discovered this interesting story about a same-sex romance on Vietnam’s version of The Bachelor.
- My inbox is drowning in mediocre newsletters. After signing up for so many different digests, I feel like I’ve been spammed. Most of these newsletters are just automated story feeds, no better than opening an app or visiting a homepage.
- I’m gonna need an RSS reader. Maybe it’s just news detox, but the urge to check “the latest” when I have 30 seconds of downtime is still strong and right now it’s a bit of an unscratchable itch. I think what I am going to do is build a Feedly profile that only has feeds from the publications I pay to read and see if that does the trick.