Trying to Keep Connected: How Do Those Folks Find Time to Tweet and All That?

Interesting series of columns on The Atlantic Wire about how various luminaries keep up with what's going on. I can't believe how much time some people spend on their electronic devices.

Malcolm Gladwell is the most recent. He writes: "I grew up in a family that didn’t get a daily newspaper, didn’t have a television, and never went to the movies. We just read books and went for walks. Not much has changed." Somewhat apologetically he says he ends up reading The New York Times a day late, only checks a few blogs, subscribes to one Twitter feed, and spends a lot of time in the library and reading books.

"On Saturdays, I replace The Times with the Wall Street Journal--which I think has a wonderful weekend arts section, and the weekend edition of the Financial Times, which has many wonderful things as well, including my fellow-Canadian Tyler Brûlé, of whom I am slightly in awe. Every once in a while I drop by the local magazine store, and buy my true love: car magazines: Car and Driver, Road & Track and—best of all—the brilliant English CAR, every issue of which I have read cover to cover going back to forever." Plus there's all the books he says he reads. There's no mention of the amount of reading he must do for the interesting work he does for The New Yorker and other publications.

That's a lot, it seems to me. I've even let my New Yorker subscription lapse because I couldn't keep up with it. Don't think I'll check out some of the more wired contributors, because I'll get bent out of shape trying to figure out how they have so much more time than I have to keep in the loop.

Now back to electioneering, and helping to make news, not merely read it.