WINIFRED GALLAGHER

The first thing you notice about people who read the news is how misinformed they are. Often, they cherry-pick one piece of information and give it enormous weight in their opinions. You realize that they have a tiny lens into a big and messy issue.

You also see that you weren’t as well inf...

Stepping back from news is hard. We’re afraid of silence, afraid to be alone with our thoughts. That’s why we pull out our phones when we’re waiting in line at a coffee shop or the grocery store. We’re afraid to ask ourselves deep and meaningful questions. We’re afraid to be bored. We’re so afrai...

We spend hours consuming news because we want to be informed. The problem is news doesn’t make us informed. In fact, the more news we consume the more misinformed we become.

News is, by definition, something that doesn’t last. It exists for only a moment before it changes. ...

Rarely do we stop to ask ourselves questions about the media we consume:

• Is this good for me?
• Is this dense with detailed information?
• Is this important?
• Is this going to stand the test of time?

When the news is free, you still need to pay people. If people aren’t paying, advertisers are. And if advertisers are in charge, the incentives change. Page views become the name of the game. More page views mean more revenue. When it comes to page views, the more controversy, the more share-abil...

Most of what you read online today is pointless. It’s not important to living a good life. It’s not going to help you make better decisions. It’s not going to help you understand the world. It’s not dense with information. It’s not going to help you develop deep and meaningful connections with th...

We used to have to wait to get a newspaper or gossip with people in our town to get our news, but not anymore. Thanks to alerts, texts, and other interruptions, news finds us almost the minute it’s published.

Some people write 12 blog posts a day for major newspapers. It’s nearly impossible to write something thoughtful on one topic, let alone 12. Over a year, this works out to writing 2880 articles (assuming four weeks of vacation).

The fluency of the person you’re getting your news f...

News producers perpetuate a culture of “tune in, don’t miss out, someone knows something you don’t, follow this or you’ll be misinformed, oh wait, look at this!” The time used to consume news comes out of time that could be used for timeless content.

Like a drug, the news is addicti...