Skimming Headlines

Yesterday, I read in the Boston Globe that someone donated $360 million to my college, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. On the school website, it's touted as the largest gift ever to any public or private university in the United States. Two things that I'd like to point out.

• I'm not the anonymous donor.
• I only encountered this news via the newspaper.

Despite the prevalent use of the Internet for news and information, nothing beats reading the headlines of a major United States newspaper. I was quite specific about just reading the headlines. I don't read the newspaper with any sort of depth. In fact, there are days where I can only skim the headlines on the first pages of each section.

But when I do look at the newspaper, I see stuff like this news about my alma mater. It reminds me of why we have newspaper editors, and writers. These people are making decisions about what would be interesting to the public at large. And I'm glad.

I believe that with the Internet, it's too easy to focus on 'your speciality'. We dive deep, but forget breadth. We lose touch with what else is going on. We're not as 'informed'.

I know I could do more. I could listen to NPR. I could subscribe to more newspapers. I could be a regular TV news viewer. I don't these things. There are too many things. Which is why I like to skim the newspaper headlines to see just what else is going on.