On a recent trip I became annoyed that I couldn’t find a morning newspaper in the hotel, when my son said, “Don’t sweat it; today’s paper has only yesterday’s news.”

For many people – and apparently especially so for younger adults – the daily newspaper is an anachronism.  It’s out of date and out of style, reporting only news that’s old, what they learned about yesterday on their PCs, iPads and smartphones.

But it is still true that I like to put my hands on a newspaper of substance; better yet on a weekly, monthly or quarterly magazine or journal; and still better on a book.  Where the author drills down deeply into a topic and draws widely from many sources.  A piece of writing that has the perspective that an immediate, terse comment – however insightful – may not be able to indulge.

“Yesterday’s news” is an invaluable resource for understanding today’s events and contemplating future developments.  One of these “old-fashioned” publications is The American Scholar which, in its Spring 2010 issue, reprinted a lecture by essayist William Deresiewicz to the US Military Academy at West Point in October of 2009.  Under the title “Solitude and Leadership,” Utne Reader reprinted portions in its August 2010 issue.  Some highlights:

• “Multi-tasking . . . impairs your ability to think.  Thinking isn’t about learning other peoples’ ideas, or memorizing a body of information.  It requires concentrating on one thing long enough to develop an idea of your own.  You simply cannot do that in bursts of 20 seconds at a time, constantly interrupted by Facebook messages or Twitter tweets, or fiddling with your iPod, or watching something on YouTube.”
   
• “It’s only by concentrating, sticking to the question, being patient, letting all parts of my mind come into play that I arrive at an original idea.”
   
• “. . . the great German novelist Thomas Mann said that a writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.  The best writers write much more slowly than everyone else, and the better they are, the slower they write.”