A good modern newspaper is an extraordinary piece of reading. It is remarkable first for what it contains: the range of news from local crime to international politics, from sport to business to fashion to science, and the range of comment and special features as well, from editorial page to feature articles and interviews to criticism of books, art, theatre and music. A newspaper is even more remarkable for the way one reads it: never completely, never straight through, but always by jumping from here to there, in and not glancing at one piece, reading another article all the way through, reading just a few paragraphs of the next. A good modern newspaper offers variety to attract many different readers, but far more than nay one reader is interested in. What brings this variety together in one place is its topicality, its immediate relation to what is happening in your world and your locality now. But immediacy and the speed of production that goes with it mean also that much of what papers in a newspaper has no more than transient value. For all these reasons, no two people really read the same paper: what each person does is to put together out of the pages of that day’s paper, his own selection and sequence, his own newspaper. For all these reasons, reading newspapers efficiently, which means getting what you want from them without missing things you need but without wasting time, demands skill and self-awareness as you modify and apply the techniques of reading.
一份好的现代报纸是一份优秀的读物。它之所以引人注目，首先是因为它的内容：从地方犯罪到国际政治，从体育到商业到时尚再到科学的新闻范围，以及评论和特写，从社论版到专题文章和采访，再到对书籍、艺术、戏剧和音乐的批评。一份报纸的阅读方式更为引人注目：从不完整，从不直接阅读，而是总是从这里跳到那里，不看一篇，通读另一篇文章，只读下一篇的几段。一份好的现代报纸提供了多样性来吸引许多不同的读者，而不止是一个读者感兴趣。将这种多样性聚集在一起的原因是它的主题性，它与你的世界和你所在地区现在发生的事情的直接关系。但即时性和随之而来的生产速度也意味着，报纸上的许多报纸只具有短暂的价值。出于所有这些原因，没有两个人真正阅读同一份报纸：每个人所做的是把当天报纸的页面、自己的选择和顺序、自己的报纸拼凑在一起。出于所有这些原因，有效地阅读报纸，也就是说，在不错过你需要的东西但又不浪费时间的情况下，从中获得你想要的东西，需要你拥有调整和应用阅读技巧时的能力和自我意识。
网友评论