All the news doesn't fit anymore

Okay, you’ve heard this from me before. So sue me. You didn’t do anything about it, did you? You’re so set in your ways that you’ve decided not only that you’re better off doing things the way you’re already doing them but that your way is some reasonable alternative, and that just isn’t true. You are in the serious position of becoming computer illiterate, which nowadays is about two kliks short of life illiterate. If nothing else, you want to know what’s going on in the world so that you can win debate rounds or coach debaters or vilify the author of this blog or simply look smart at cocktail parties (has anyone had a cocktail party since, oh, 1974?). And then there’s my favorite line: If you were smarter, I’d be funnier. My goal here is to increase your brainpower. While resistance may not be futile, it is ill-advised.

It begins with the fact that newspapers are collapsing all around us. (Hearst, owner of some of the recently departed/departing, is waving the white flag by creating its own e-reader to take on the Kindle in the periodicals arena.) Even if you wanted to keep up with what’s going on in the world via newspapers, it gets progressively harder as time goes by. I maintain that the New York Times is the one to read even if you live in Podunk, but although at the moment the Gray Lady seems to be surviving as a physical entity, I wouldn’t bet the old 401K on its being there in 5 years, at least in its present form. Why are newspapers collapsing? Well, if the currency of newspapers is indeed news, the internet can deliver it with an immediacy that a pile of newsprint plunked down on your doorstep once a day can’t match. And the money behind newspapers, either space or classified ads, is going elsewhere. Craigslist is usually cited as the chief reason why no one uses newspaper classifieds anymore. The immediacy of instantaneous news is reflected in craig’s instantaneous apartment listings (or whatever). The horse is out of the barn, and it’s not going back. (And oh, yeah, you can buy horses on craigslist. Also there’s a category “baby+kids” so I guess you can also buy children, but I wouldn’t recommend it unless you can afford to send them to college.)

Of course, you weren’t reading the newspapers anyhow, so you’re not terrifically affected by all this. At least if you’re an LDer you weren’t reading the papers. Policy people and Extempers (should) breathe news, and Pfffters are getting into the swing of it (although some strike me as still a bit dilettantish about knowing what’s going on in the world before a topic about it is released), but LDers like to think that all they need to know they already know or can look up. This is not true. Broad general knowledge precedes specific in-depth knowledge, at least if that knowledge is going to be put to broad use (as in informing one’s debate career). My arguments for reading daily newspapers (or their contemporary analog, whatever that is) remain viable, and you can dig back through the muck of this blog to find them, or listen to my research lecture, or simply assume that since I am always right and I never lie, you can trust me. You need to know what’s happening in the world. You have no choice. Resistance, as I said, is not futile, but it will make you a dolt. And we wouldn’t want that, now, would we?

I’ll continue this next time (I haven’t actually gotten to the point yet), but meanwhile, stare at this for a while.

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