NewsBeat

June 2019 NewsBeat 9 Mysterious algorithms known only to the gremlins of Silicon Valley push me toward stories that the gremlins reckon must be of related interest, as though, having read a story about Trea Turner's broken index finger, I will now be eager for a review of the latest developments in orthopedic surgery. But I'm not. My newspaper could never be so noisy or presumptuous. It holds still. The relative benefits of reading on paper versus reading on a screen have been examined by our ever- busy social scientists, but their findings are unsettled, and will likely forever remain so. How we read on a screen or paper and how much we retain of what we read surely depends on personal history and experience. My experiment in home delivery would yield different results with subjects younger than I, who scroll and swipe without the galaxy of pleasant associations that linger from my many happy years of newspaper reading. To the well-wired mind, the newspaper might seem intolerably limiting. A screen is many things all at once or in quick succession: The New York Times, Netflix, an auction house, a video of last summer's vacation, a box of recipes, a text from a friend. The newspaper contains multitudes, but in the end, it is only itself. The well-wired mind knows that the screen, as a medium for news, is truer to real life because it brings us life in what we insist on calling "real time." As if there is such a thing! Time's relativity (thanks, Einstein) means we should have some control over the pace with which the world, and the news, comes at us, since neither screen nor paper will ever do better than offer a simulacrum of real life. My daily paper at the curb brings its own simulacrum in its unique way, its own fantasy of what the world is like. I relish reacquainting myself with it each morning, at least for as long as I can. Of course, when my day really begins and I peek at my phone or flip open my laptop, the illusion is destroyed and replaced by another, much more frenetic one—until it returns the next morning with the steaming cup and the plumped- up chair, with the world held in place so I can get a good look at it. Andrew Ferguson is a staff writer at The Atlantic. — Reprinted from The Atlantic "In my chair, newspaper in hand, I rest unmolested. On my phone or my laptop, I am beckoned incessantly to click on one link or another or still another, boxes of irrelevant video appear and disappear, audio screeches out unbidden, ads scurry across the screen obstructing the paragraphs I'm trying to read. Mysterious algorithms known only to the gremlins of Silicon Valley push me toward stories that the gremlins reckon must be of related interest… My newspaper could never be so noisy or presumptuous. It holds still." — Andrew Ferguson, staff writer, "There's No Substitute for Print" The Atlantic, April 10, 2019.

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