Local Man Satisfied with Just Reading Headlines

YOUR REGION—A local man believes that he is just as educated and well informed as any full newspaper reader by simply reading the headlines.

John Smith, a self-described intellectual, is certain that he is as much “in-the-know” as anyone else by only reading a very small percent of a periodical’s content.

“I find the bulk of newspapers is just filler and doesn’t really add anything” commented Smith “it’s usually just filled with some dumb quote from somebody who doesn’t really have anything to say but they publish every single insufferable word and then they add some asinine statistic that doesn’t really mean anything.” 

Smith isn’t alone in his opinion; a poll conducted by SuperWhizBang! has found that up to 47% of readers only read the headlines most or some of the time.

“The headline captures everything you need to know” Smith continued “if I see a story that says ‘Three Hundred Dead in Tragic Conga Line Accident’, I know exactly what the story’s about; how could that possibly require any additional explanation?”

 Smith has stated that he hasn’t read more than a headline in over 15 years and has now found the time to not only read all his local papers but almost every national and international publication in the world, a fact he is known to bring up often in conversation with close friends, family and total strangers.    

“I know a lot of people who will waste their entire morning reading one newspaper cover to cover” he said, “I can get all that information in five minutes, know everything that’s going on, and not be suffocated by all that rhetoric, opinion and useless ‘information’.”

So just what does Smith do with all his free time? Well, he says without newspapers taking up so much of his time, he has plenty of time to focus on his real passions.

“I like to watch movies, well I actually only watch the trailers, so that only takes a couple minutes and I love music but I just skip to the choruses so that’s pretty quick” he explained “I was thinking of traveling but I can just look places up on the internet so it only takes an hour tops to go around the world.”

Smith says he actually spends the majority of his days finding new ways to save time. He believes due to his efficiency he is well on his way to becoming the most educated man on the planet, although it seems as though the word “irony” has still somehow evaded his learning. 

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A version of this article appeared in Simon Fraser University's Student Newspaper The Peak on 06/18/2012: http://www.the-peak.ca/2012/06/this-article-is-about-a-man-who-only-read-the-headlines-of-articles/