How to approach newspaper reading
Newspaper reading doesn't feature very high on most people's daily priorities - especially youngsters. When compared to the kind of hours people within a newsroom spend on making the paper, the average of 20 to 30 minutes that most people spend on reading it are a real lesson in humility for most journalists.

But I find that a little less than an hour of "smartly" reading the paper can be a very efficient exercise in building your knowledge of current affairs and general knowledge. It is also a very good way of improving your vocabulary.

Since ST is the largest circulating daily in Singapore, let's start with it. For one, ST has so many sections and sub sections, cynics and environmentalists may cry foul that it single handedly destroys an entire jungle every day! I don't know about the recycling bit and I claim to be no expert.

But, we are talking about intelligent reading. Most readers, especially the youngsters read Life! and browse through the main paper. If truth be told, that's hardly what one can consider enlightening. Leave Life! for recreational reading.

The first thing is to read the main paper - the biggest news stories gripping the nation at press time. After a while, you will have all the main issues on your finger-tips - from food shortage to rising food prices to Tibet to employment and foreign workers.

These days ST has adopted a cover-page layout that greatly resembles a layout common to a major Indian daily - Times of India. There are the main stories in the centre , other important stories on the left and the news feature column, Upfront on the right. So if you really lack the time, you can simply read the cover page and finish up.

If you do have the time, flip to the second page for major headlines in all the different sections. There is also a "what it should have been" - embarrassing errors made in the stories - cynical readers love going over that to have reasons to claim that dailies in Singapore are going to the dogs....to each his own.

A common complaint that people have is the lack of time to read an entire article. The most important news point always comes in the first 3 paragraphs of the story. No further. So you don't need to read the whole article if you don't feel like it. I generally do that for some TNP feature stories and the the review pages of ST.

At this juncture, I would like to encourage every reader to go over the review pages. The writers and their commentaries often leave you with food for thought and a better understanding of world affairs. So take some time for it, even if you must force yourself into it.

Flip through Home - it often has a gem hidden alongside the increasingly mundane reports of murders, thefts, housebreaking, accidents etc etc (I hereby ask the crime journalists to excuse my honest confession, but snatch thefts I feel will only excite the victim and the thief). There are some tearjerker stories i.e. baby Jolene who left an entire nation mourning. But there are also some intriguing write-ups i.e. Prima Deli, the MOH clamp down on places and people offering slimming programs and more recently the health ads issue.

Excuse my ignorance, but much as I would like to, I can't bring myself to read money and the sports pages and I only refer to the classifieds when I need some repair work at home. Recruit is good, but I don't have the time or inclination to sieve through and pick out stuff for myself - not yet. After I'm done with ST and Home, I'll go over Life!, the supplements like Mind Your Body, Digital Life and Urban and call it a day.

Time spent - 40 minutes