Despite my best efforts to distance myself from online media, I still occasionally give in to some mindless scrolling, mainly on Threads and Instagram. Although I avoid Facebook, I guess this still makes me, in a way, a product of Mark Zuckerberg.

I do my best to steer clear of online news sites because I find the reporting uninspired, and even local news has leaned heavily into sensational, click-driven headlines. Mostly, though, I want to avoid the reactions and constant news sharing, which are so often toxic (how are people still on Twitter?). The downside is that I now know very little about local events and rely on others to fill me in. For instance, I recently learned from a friend that a Three Rivers council meeting was moved online due to threats and hateful social media commentary—a change some view as a win. It’s disheartening to see that racism is still alive and well on PEI.

One solution I hadn’t considered is going back to print. I haven’t subscribed to a print newspaper since I last received the Taipei Times 25 years ago.

This idea came after reading: I’m a journalist and I’m changing the way I read news. This is how.

I have resubscribed to print newspapers because they are finite; when you’re done, you’re done. Here, I’m taking a cue from Kelsey Richards, the “print princess” and “media literate hottie” who reads print newspapers on TikTok. “When you read print media, you give yourself that space to feel those emotions compared to if you read something online and then you immediately switch over to Instagram…and then you go on Twitter….and then you go on Facebook…and then a CNN notification comes up on your phone,” she told Slate last year. “With all those distractions, those emotions no longer belong to that blocked-out time period. They are now convoluting your schedule, your work, the fact that your mom just texted you that something’s going on with your grandparents — it’s just too much for your body to handle. Print media gives us the opportunity to sit down, and decide when we want to feel the emotions we want to feel, rather than letting some arbitrary algorithm decide how we should feel.”

Perhaps I should try a paper with my morning slow coffee habit. But do they still deliver?

Also: News is bad for you – and giving up reading it will make you happier.