
In recent times, however, I’ve been finding the printed newspaper more and more obnoxious and irrelevant, and I’ve secretly been wanting to cancel it. It’s a chore to retrieve it each morning from somewhere out on the lawn. It’s a chore to hold it up and turn the pages, and I find myself skimming faster and faster the older I get (usually while sitting on the john). Whereas with online news I can just sneak a peek at it here and there, with a newspaper you have to carve out a special reading time and place, which just doesn't fit into my life anymore. Plus, I’ve often read about particular news items online before I see them in the next morning’s paper. (My main online sources of news are the New York Times and the Deseret News because they both have good e-mail services that push daily headlines and breaking news right under my nose.)
So this past week I took the plunge and canceled the paper, and so far it’s been a relief. On this past Sunday, it felt really nice not to have to sort through the huge paper and set aside a half-hour to read through it. I’d much rather follow blogs and e-mails and websites on my iPhone and computers than handle an inky daily paper.
Don’t worry, I still love printed books and magazines, and I do have the decency to feel a little guilty about becoming a modern-day casualty of the electronic media. In fact, I feel bad about several traditional industries that the Internet has decimated, including the travel, music, and bookstore industries. I will still occasionally indulge myself in newspapers, especially when I visit foreign cities, because I love to get a flavor of local life through the papers. However, it feels great to be out from under the demands of keeping up with a daily newspaper! What took me so long to cancel it? (Oh, and it saves me $180 a year.)
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