So yesterday I pointed out (you’re welcome) that network news is terrible and should not be watched. Which is heresy if you’re a boomer. The reality is that those network news programs are aimed to the 80 to death audience.

But making fun of boomer TV taste is low hanging fruit, and I will not indulge in it for even a minute longer.

What I’m saying today is a little more broad attack: you don’t need news. You probably don’t need any news at all.

Which sounds vaguely unAmerican. After all, it’s been drilled into our heads that we need to be well informed, and if we’re not we won’t be able to vote or be good citizens. Heck, we imagine that we will hardly be able to survive.

Let’s analyze this. What does your usual news source report on? Following the “if it bleeds, it leads” dictum, violence, especially gratuitous or “senseless” (their word) violence will start the roster. Next, political news. Maybe bad weather. You get the point.

What good, precisely, does any of this do to you? You read about violence that does not affect you. About politicians who are doing what politicians do, which is normally to fill their pockets. Which, again, unless your wife is, say, the Secretary of Transportation, will have absolutely nothing to do with you. Weather? Western wildfires? A cyclone in the Philippines? Drought in Australia? Again, 99.9% of the time these have zero to do with your life.

As with politics, the more local the more important. A good, reliable local news source is both hard to find, and extremely valuable.

All of us have limited time. Exactly 168 hours every week. One third of that is spent sleeping, roughly another third working, then you have to eat, and it’s a good idea to spend some time with your husband or wife and your kids.

So we’re down to a very small amount of leftover time. Time that you want to spend on important stuff, maybe important stuff that’s fun as well. Why spend that time reading about a parliamentary shakeup in Denmark?

Partly we pay attention to news because it’s low attention reading. It requires little mental devotion. And it likewise yields little.

Are you reading all the important stuff you should? Professional reading? Religious reading? Classics you’ve always wanted to read? Because if you’re not caught up with the reading that’s important, why are you spending time reading stuff that’s not important?

News always sounds urgent because the people putting it together want you to think it’s urgent because maybe you’ll watch and provide the all important eyes for their advertisers.

Urgent is different from important. Urgent will not be urgent in a few days. But important will remain important. Try very hard to stick with the important.