Last year I started reading a physical newspaper | Hacker News Reader

Last year I started reading a physical newspaper

brianschrader.com

A newspaper has a start and an end. That's as simple as it needs to be for me to move on with my day.

On the internet, the news is endless and the information overload constant. Set aside social media. I get a headache just reading an average article on a news website.

A paragraph will have multiple links, which is incredibly distracting on its own. But that is compounded by the fact that paragraphs themselves are broken up by a "Related Articles" block of links.

Add in a dynamic sidebar with the latest stories, a live stock ticker in the top corner, a banner showing "breaking news", and it's no wonder people might pick up a newspaper again.

Set a timer ;D

Time-blocking is useful, but an additional affordance of a physical publication is that when you're done with it, you can simply pick up the whole thing and dispose of it.

Opening up browser tabs creates the problem of having to identify which of those need closing. Depending on your browsing habits and/or tools, that itself can be nontrivial.

Physically manifested information has its advantages.

> A newspaper has a start and an end. That's as simple as it needs to be for me to move on with my day.

That's the heart of it. As the author writes, "Once I've read the paper, I'm done reading the news." I try to get most of my news from a weekly newspaper (in print) for that reason, though I admit I've had middling success maintaining discipline about this lately.

There's no fundamental reason a digital news outlet couldn't achieve the same property by exclusively releasing stories in a discrete "edition" on the web once per week. I guess the incentives just don't line up to make that happen.

It's not exactly what you're describing, but The Economist does something fairly similar. They publish a weekly print edition, and articles on their site are posted at a much slower pace than other sites.

Newsweek is maybe a better comparison?

Yep, The Economist is the weekly print newspaper I subscribe to :)

But my problem is that I have trouble avoiding checking news websites on a more frequent basis. (EDIT: And that includes some online articles from The Economist... which don't seem to come in on a purely weekly schedule, right? Though maybe I'm mistaken.)

The New York Times publishes its daily paper edition online as well.

https://www.nytimes.com/section/todayspaper

The Times in the UK does this albeit several times a day as opposed to a weekly digest.

The online stories are hard to read because the text will jump several inches or even offscreen as you try to read it, as it randomly inserts more ads.

This effect is especially bad trying to read on the iphone.

What makes it “especially bad” on an iPhone vs an Android device?

I think they probably meant vs a desktop browser. But you can run Firefox with uBlock Origin or Brave on Android.

iPhone users can also block ads, and not just in Safari but in other apps, too. Just like an Android phone can.

Blokada should work fine. I personally use AdGuard Pro.

I pointed this out in the previous debate as to why I like PDF more than modern website. ( Yes I know we could do that on the Web as well )

> A newspaper has a start and an end.

Yes, but sometimes that crossword takes me half the damn day.

Totally agree. I read online still but I read a "daily edition" which is obviously static. I also read a news weekly on a tablet.

I could read the paper versions but for me, having the digital version happens to be more convenient. Point is, simple daily / weekly / monthly editions are my strong preference for an undistracted read of the news with a definite beginning and end.

I’m trying to solve this problem with shoto.io

My goal is to offer a digest of tech news so you can get rid of the infinite feeds!

I started working for a newspaper just after 2007-08 hit and hastened the decline of the already struggling industry.

One day, after working diligently on the job for a few months, I pitched my editor an idea for an online-only story with some interesting multimedia elements. He told me I could definitely work on that story “on my own time.” I was an hourly employee so I asked him to clarify if he wanted me to schedule the work around the other stories I was working on at the time. He laughed and told me that he couldn’t justify paying me for any project meant only for the website. I was welcome to work on the story and publish it on my own time of course.

I decided to leave the publication and the overall newspaper industry that day. I still miss the feeling of working in a buzzing newsroom, there’s just nothing like it. Similar to the author, I’m nostalgic for the days when the news cycle was limited by time and column inches.

I don’t think we’re ever going back to anything resembling the heyday of newspaper publishing. If you’re lucky enough to live in an area where halfway decent reporting happens then maybe subscribing to the print edition makes sense. Unfortunately I am not so lucky. I read magazines for my “news” and try not to check the headlines too often on my phone.

I grew up with a morning and afternoon daily. I never knew how good I had it. Two comics sections! News stories with same day updates! Imagine such a wonder…

If you’re lucky enough to live in an area where halfway decent reporting happens then maybe subscribing to the print edition makes sense.

I definitely would if there was actual value to it beyond reprinting AP articles I already read online two days ago because the local Newspaper itself is actually owned by a national media entity and contains maybe a page of news that actually feels locally informative-as was the case living in SmallTown USA.

Now, living in one of the US’ largest cities (Chicago), online community ‘zines’ tend to be more relevant to my block, whereas the city paper is pretty much only good for “the mayor upset a percentage of their constituency, and the Bears are still trying to figure out football”.

Every now and then there will be something truly informative for me as a citizen, but independent local reporting when done well and with care and vigor will always replace a physical paper from the traditional local entity for my consumption habits.

(That said newspaper crosswords are still for completely random and absolutely nonsensical reasons a magically anachronistic experience)

The only really "local" paper left is actually just a classified ad section, but it IS all truly local and actually quite helpful (finding lots of stuff the internet doesn't care to know about).

I could see that having a short "letter from the editor" section that might grow ...

No clue why I didn’t bother mentioning it, but agreed! Along with crossword puzzles the local newspaper classifieds section has that same hyper local peep into what’s going on around you from lawsuits (sometimes very funny notices/threats are published) to community charity events that probably haven’t yet found their way to a tweet or timeline post

Good call out

YMMV.

The local daily (or Sunday) paper in many parts of the US is ... simply unreadable.

As in: there's no news in it, the writing that exists is poor, the articles are filler and largely newswire or (by all appearances) bot-written.

There are pitifully few counterexamples, and if your local region has a paper that's actually managing to put out a worthwhile product (if not exactly thriving), well, count your blessings.

In Chicago, the local NPR affiliate just announced an exploration to acquire one of the city's two remaining daily general newspapers and operate it as part of a non-profit news organisation:

https://www.robertfeder.com/2021/09/30/chicago-public-media-...

(Chicago's other daily, the much-suffering, badly-TRONC'd Tribune, was scooped by virtually everyone on this and barely managed to copy and paste WBEZ's press release the next morning. Though it managed to report on yet another senior editor leaving, the 40th or so editorial staffer to do so since the paper was bought by a venture-capital leech in May.)

I see that as a likely development in other cities as well --- perhaps KQED / Northern California Public Media picking up the SF Chronicle or Examiner, for example.

Otherwise, I really see no path forward for print.

Yes, there's some benefit in having a Very Finite News Feed, and being able to bundle up an entire day's articles and set them on the recycling bin when done. But really, there's simply no there here any more.

Are there any particular traits or markers how you can tell a story is bot written?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley

It feels like this, but in words.

I tend to suspect it based on a number of factors:

- Maeterial or topic. Quantified material, especially business, finance, and sport, read this way most often. Occasionally procedural stories, regional government or legal stories especially. Not typically hyperlocal news (though at times even that), but major-metro or state-level, usually less-significant events.

- Bylines or agency credit. Unfamiliar names, names typical of foreign regions with low wages and a large English-speaking population (Philippines, India, Sri Lanka, etc.). A few agencies specialising in outsourced and/or algorithmically-assisted artical generation are known (see the Wired article below).

- Less word salad than paragraph salad. Suspect articles tend to have consistency within a given sentence, but a larger-scale structure seems missing. Normal journalism has this problem frequently enough that this isn't a certain tell, but it does have a smell about it. Contrast with well-strutcured narrative, say, typical of a New Yorker artical. Much algorithmic writing seems to rely heavily on syntactic sugar. I feel often as if someone's reading me a chart or an event timeline, whilst trying to hide the fact. Much GPT-3 content has this nature. I shows no understanding of the content or context.

I'm sincerly hoping your question isn't asked in hopes of improving the deception ...

https://www.wired.com/2012/04/can-an-algorithm-write-a-bette...

Yeah, it's pretty clear in some financial news stories. One tell is how quickly they come out. The prose is along the lines of:

"Microsoft underperformed the market on Monday while Apple rose 0.3%. The DOW rose 0.6% ..."

It's just statistics dressed up with some word salad.

Yeah, any article that is "facts and numbers in some fancy dress" is almost certainly automatically produced. Stocks and sports are some of the most common, though a human may take a glance at it before it hits the wire in some cases.

Much more annoying to me is the simple "every newspaper is just reprinting AP".

> (From the article) I found that having a physical paper show up at my door made me more likely to read it.

So true. I had the same experience with magazines. Growing up, I would have a magazine in my hand all the time. Somewhere in between, I moved on to digital versions, but it just hasn't been the same experience. I also feel I retain information much better given that a physical copy has fewer distractions compared to 10 open tabs and banners and snippets and what not while reading online. I haven't bought a physical magazine in quite some time, maybe it is time to try them again.

I recently picked up a copy of a magazine from a Little Free Library and ended up reading it cover to cover.

It made me wonder if someone younger than me (I'm right on the line between GenX and Millennial) would have the same experience, or if they wouldn't be as interested in a physical copy because they weren't raised reading them.

There are unfortunately not too many physical newspapers in circulation, greatly limiting your choice. Conversely you can make your feed into a physical printed form; there was a thing called the Little Printer back in 2012, a thermal printer that prints an aggregated feed of news and social activities into a sort of mini newspaper. The company had shut down by now, but see [1] for the open-sourced version.

[1] https://tinyprinter.club/

I have been told if you limit yourself to reading newspapers that are a week old for awhile, you will quit reading newspapers all together.

Sometimes. Or you may find that letting the news settle and digest for a week helps sort out what's more relevant.

As an interesting experiment, you can browse some websites in a similar fashion.

Searching HN for highest-rated items, limited to the past week or month, for example:

Top / past week: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastWeek&page=0&prefix=fal...

Top / past month: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastMonth&page=0&prefix=fa...

(Arbitrary time periods can also be specified.)

You can also use the "Front" links to look back in time. I suggesty at least one year, and preferably 5 or 10.

5 years ago today: https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2016-10-08

10 years ago today: https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2011-10-08

15 years ago today: https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2006-10-08

(Time didn't exist back then, you might want to content yourself with 14 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2007-10-08)

There's no way to automate skipping back 5/10/15 years on the site itself, but a simple shell script would do that:

  for i in {5..15..5} do
      echo "https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=$( date -d "$i years ago" +%Y-%m-%d )"
  done

Feed that to a browser or whatever, as you wish.

Reddit affords a similar capability by specifing a null search for "top" or "best" posts over a week, month, or year. Run that against a subreddit or user. Or a specific search term or URL for that matter.

And ... it turns out that 15 years ago now produces results:

https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2006-10-09

Super interesting article on VC and the New York startup scene in 2006.

https://avc.com/2006/10/the_nyc_develop/

Wow, that is helpful. Because even very interesting links have a quite short live on the front page, to be replaced with generic news, that makes you miss out if you do not check everyday.

I mean, the point of a newspaper is to learn what's going on. So, yeah, if you only read old newspapers you'll stop reading them. If you only get papers in a language you don't speak you'll also rapidly stop.

Heck, start watching your favorite late night shows on a one-week delay and you'll have the same thing happen.

I am a 20 something and I was subscribed to the local paper for daily news. It was great! The biggest gift is that you can scan most of the newspaper in the morning, get a sense of the big news of the day, and you never felt a "need" to find out more. Like I tend to do when reading news on the internet.

Unfortunately, the local paper gave me no way to unbundle the weekend editions from my subscription - an enormous pile of advertisements containing almost no news!

One person's annoyance is another person's feature. Growing up, there were times when the coupons in those ads were the only reason we got to eat out from time to time. Going through them discussing what to have was fun.

What I like about a physical newspaper is that there is a completeness to it. I scan 2 or 3 sections, I know I have looked at everything, I am done. In an online website of a newspaper, there is no sense of which day the newsarticle is from unless you click on it, and it is easy to miss "minor articles" which are often of your interest, if not for the general readership.

I’ve been reading daily newspapers for years now. Reading the news on a large paper sheet is just so much more pleasant than reading it on a small phone screen.

Sadly the newspaper industry will never be restored. I somewhat adapted my information flow towards ultra limited and clean experience. My usual daily routine limits my news access to two cycles, early (5:30 - 6:00 AM) and late (18:00 - 18:30).

Yeas ago in search on how to limit the affect of "design trends" over my design process I started using Reeder, a RSS app for MacOS. Paired with adequate font it was a speedy and minimalist way to consume information.

Today I practically live half of my workday in Emacs, taking notes (org mode is a bliss) and making quick code edits (VS Code is still my favorite for long sessions) so naturally Elfeed is my news interface.

The limitation of news access for me is working perfectly. I cannot imagine going back to doom-scrolling on my phone or desktop.

Your local library may allow you to read the newspaper for free and in the same layout as the print issue.

The biggest reason newsprint is not going to disappear isn't even in the article.

Newspapers aren't just about news. They're about gossip, infamy, and fame.

Nobody is truly famous until their name and picture has been splashed across the daily newspapers.

Without newspapers, there would be no universal concept of who is famous, and who is not. And everybody needs to know who is famous. That's why newspapers are always going to be around.

> everybody needs to know who is famous

Citation needed.

"You should be in the newspaper three times in your life - when you're born, when you're married, and when you die" - advice to rich people around 1900.

Why should I give two bits about who is famous?

You may not (and nor do I), but the insane amount of clicks, likes, and follows that 'celebs' get online clearly shows that a lot of people do.

But OP said everyone should care. We know lots of people do. Question is why should we?

You don't have to worship fame or approve of it.

You might disdain or dismiss it.

Regardless, the role of fame in your community is to establish values, information flows, and priorities in economic and social matters that affect you. For that reason, it may be of use to you to know who is famous and who is infamous, and why.

Started a WSJ subscription when the pandemic started. No more doom-scrolling. Life is good.

Also, reading the newspaper becomes a fun ritual.

I don't _need_ to know when something happens the same day. I sometimes read the paper a day late, and that's okay.

The WSJ weekend edition has an excellent "Book review" section that I look forward to.

Highly recommend a print paper, even if you pick a different one.

This has been my standard advice for a while:

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

Can you explain ? hn.algolia.com is down.

Oh! Sorry about that. I'll repost what I said last time this came up:

> I'll repeat what I always say whenever this comes up: subscribe to the Sunday edition of a major city daily. If your city doesn't have a very good one, then just do the New York Times (but note that the Metro section is one of the most interesting and useful parts of the daily paper and you'll miss out on that if you subscribe to a national paper). You want the Sunday edition because it's the week's largest edition and contains stories that ran earlier in the week, plus sections that aren't in the weekday editions. And you probably want real paper. The idea is to scan through it from beginning to end, getting an idea of what the major stories are and what's broadly happening in the world. Read it over coffee or while watching football or whatever.

> Anything more than this is entertainment. It's not important and won't make you more informed. If you want to read more than that because you like it, then that's fine. Some people like The Bachelor. But they don't confuse it for an education. It's entertainment.

Aha. I totally agree. Here in the UK the Sunday Times has a significant (for printed news) following, and is so full of stuff that people devote their whole Sundays reading it.

Yeah, in the U.S. it really depends where you live. I'm in Rhode Island, so I can get the Providence Journal (meh) or the Boston Globe (very good). Before that I lived in NYC and got the Times. But the hometown newspaper I grew up reading (The St. Louis Post-Dispatch) is a shell of its former self, which really bums me out.

Reading the news is bad, whether digital or printed. Try going without for a quarter.

Semi-related: I am a devotee to the New York Times’ “Replica Edition,” an exact reproduction of the daily printed paper.

On a nice big iPad pro, you’re making almost no compromises between website disarray or creating paper waste.

Every Christmas holidays, I buy all the national and local papers and read them every day. By the end of the holiday period, it reminds me why I don't bother reading newspapers throughout the year.

Can you still get physical newspapers delivered?

I read The Economist on paper each week, but that's it for paper-based news.

Yeah, LA times is $7/wk for seven day delivery.

Yup, I get New York Times home delivery, and I'm nowhere near NYC. It's not available everywhere, but it is in more areas than you might think.

for me, I just recently got a free 4 week subscription to the paper, to be honest, I had read the news in the paper already, about the only thing I've done is the sudoku.

I do the same, although my “physical newspaper” is my RSS Reader. I look forward every morning spending 60-90 minutes reading the articles that interest me, while drinking coffee.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com