Slow News

An article was making the rounds recently, obviously written by one of Musk’s minions, arguing that Twitter is destined to replace traditional media because it provides quicker and less biased access to news. Less biased because users constantly verify and correct what is posted, the author claims, Wisdom of the Crowds in action.

If you usually read your news on The Daily Mail instead of the Guardian or the New York Post instead of the Times, you might as well go to Twitter to read your news. It’s quicker and gives you the impression of an unbiased look at events. But to claim that information on Twitter is less biased after we’ve watched falsehoods and flat-out lies rip through our timelines for years is an interesting point of view.

Anyways, what got me thinking about this piece was how I prefer to read news, particularly how fast I receive news. With the advent of blogs and again with the rise of social media, we’ve seen claims that traditional news media are too slow to feed our hungry brains. I never felt that way. If anything, I want the news to slow down.

When I still had access to a weekly newspaper in Germany, I rarely read any news online. I enjoyed receiving a stack of paper once a week that summarised the latest ongoings in depth and with the necessary critical distance. Instead of reading ten pieces for an event and five opinions, they would print one. One that contained all the essential information, what happened and how, its context, and its effects. Instead of reporting on every breaking news, they would print the ones that matter, which turned out to be relevant. And instead of a never-ending timeline, there’s a page one and a page 60, and everything in between, and after that, it’s finished. There’s nothing more to read.

Most news luckily doesn’t affect me directly, so reading about them later is fine. And I usually notice the events that affect me anyway. I don’t need constant updates about the world’s affairs. Not from news websites, not from Twitter.