Secret #61 Stop Reading Newspapers

According to a communications industry forecast reported by the Center for Media Research, in 2007 American adults will spend about a week reading a daily newspaper.

Think about that for a moment.

A whole week every year over the course of a lifetime is a year and a half!

At the risk of being misunderstood, let me ask you this question: Might there be a better, more efficient way to get news?

If you really want news, you may want to quit reading newspaper's altogether. USC's president, Steve Sample, wrote a very stimulating book called, The Contrarian's Guide to Leadership. In the book, Sample tells of a personal experiment he conducted: He quit reading all newspapers for six months. Sample writes, "I undertook this experiment in order to see what deleterious [harmful] effects, if any, my being insulated from the popular news media would have on my ability to carry out my responsibilities as the leader of a large and complex institution."

What did Sample discover?

1. He got news in a fast and accurate manner--from other people. And people were eager and downright happy to tell him what was going on. As a result, Sample writes, "I was stunned to find out that, within twelve hours of a story's first appearing in the popular press, I was often better informed...."

2. "The man who reads nothing at all is better informed than the man who reads nothing but newspapers." This is a maxim that Sample attributes to Thomas Jefferson.

3. "I realized that I (along with nearly everyone else in America)... had given over a big chunk of my intellectual independence to a group of editors and reporters whose core values and interests were not necessarily congruent with my own" (page 61).

I am NOT suggesting that you live an uninformed life! I am suggesting that reading a newspaper for news may be a waste of your precious time and life.

Just a thought.

What do you think?