Breaking NewsGuide to a Good Life: Newspapers can broaden your horizons

Publication: National Post
Date: Friday January 1st, 2010

To keep up with the news, think twice before you abandon the newspaper for the Internet. You may be narrowing your news perspective.

“The risk of only reading the Internet is that you would only focus on the things that interest you,” said Christopher Waddell, journalism professor at Carleton University. “You wouldn’t be exposed to alternate points of view.”

When skimming through the day’s headlines in a newspaper, people notice things they otherwise wouldn’t have read, he said.

“You tend to go to the Internet for something specific,” said Prof. Waddell.

The newspaper brings together all sorts of news and views and presents it in a way that lets you see everything quickly, he said.

“If you skim through the whole paper you will go through the arts section and you will read some stories about books and plays and movies that you wouldn’t normally look for on the Internet,” said Prof. Waddell.

“When you read the newspaper, you always come across things you didn’t expect,” he said.