The Newspaper is a staple ingredient in the diet of a civil services aspirant. The Newspaper is the most wonderful resource on current affairs and issues of day-to-day importance. With the changing nature of the examination, Newspaper reading has assumed greater importance. This to the extent that many coaching institutes have mushroomed in the recent year with a niche in newspaper reading.
Aspirants face many problems in this area of preparation. Most specifically,
Q. How many hours should I devote to newspaper reading?
Q. How many newspapers should I read?
Q. Should I make detailed newspaper notes or should I go with the Wizard and compendium?
Q. Should I make soft notes or hard self-written notes?
Q. Till when should I read the newspaper?
Q. Should I read a newspaper or should I read general books to diversify my knowledge?
Q. What all kinds of news should I read?
Q. How important is a newspaper from prelims perspective? Do we have questions on issues of the current affair?
Q. Which newspaper should I study?
First and foremost, There is no replacement to making self-notes from the newspaper. If you are reading from some ready-made material than you are only settling for something lesser and different. This I say for 4 different reasons.
Firstly, Newspaper reading should be a life long habit. As a civil servant, the newspaper becomes your eyes and ears to the ground. Therefore, if we are hesitant or lazy to read the newspaper now, then how will we do justice with the job as and when an opportunity falls on us.
Secondly, Your brain knows it best what to pick, what you can remember and what is the sequence of news items. So it is better to make self-notes than relying on Vajiram or Wizard or GKToday. They can act as good supplement because they compile the whole issue. But kind of insight and perspective newspaper helps in developing, these materials do not. I always get a very mechanical feeling when I read from these compendiums. Newspaper reading is more spiritual and affective in nature.
Thirdly, These compendiums do not read between the lines. They are not Prelims or Mains or Interview tailored. Rather they are prepared in a way to provoke maximum fear in the aspirant so that they go viral in the market. Thus, you end up reading the same thing which thousands of others are reading. How is your preparation different then. Remember Civil Services is about back to basics.
Fourthly, It is better to capture the information in bits and pieces for the sake of better retention and concept formation.The newspaper covers an issue over a period of time and different authors give a different perspective which helps in a development of multi-dimensional thinking.
Fifthly, You develop the literally skill and vocabulary by reading the news items.
So If possible, make your own points. You can use various approaches like five point or summary of the summary or tagging approach about which I have written in other blogs. If not possible to make notes, then at least read the newspaper on a daily basis.
However, A large number of aspirants are always depressed and confused about the time they should devote to the newspaper. Especially, in the first couple of years, I see people going to Vajiram sir often asking about how much time should they devote to newspaper reading. It is difficult to manage the newspaper along with two optional or an optional or GS class.
For this, take it in writing, from my experience, I can decisively say that if you are making notes of the newspaper then it should take anywhere between 90 to 135 minutes. Not less than that. There might be some days like Saturday edition or Sunday issue, one can manage within 90 minutes but otherwise, howsoever fast and hard you are, if you are reading with paying enough attention to details then it takes 90 minutes at least. On average I would say is 110 minutes.
There are people who may claim to read newspaper in 40 minutes or 60 minutes. That is all nonsense. Either they miss the critical thinking or they miss important news items or they are too superficial in reading the newspaper or not making notes from the newspaper.
Now comes the question of how many newspapers should I read?
Well, for a first attempt candidate who is also burdened with traditional GS and optional, I would say one newspaper is more than sufficient.
Even otherwise, I feel one newspaper is always sufficient. Instead of devoting time to the second newspaper, one can better follow insightonIndia or Mrunal or RSTV or read a book.
Even for the interview candidate, I suggest, don't bog down yourself with newspaper reading too much. Just cover one newspaper and that should be sufficient.
Now on the question of should I make self-notes or Evernote-powered notes on the computer?
See, Evernote powered notes are very easy to catalog, search and are portable in nature. Thus, it is very appealing to go for that sort of notes in the present tech-savvy era.
However, being little orthodox in my approach, I noticed a multitude of problems with the digital note making practice.
Firstly, You end up indiscriminately copy pasting and dumping the content on Evernote. This results in bulkier than Hulk size of notes by the quarter end. Instead of enticing you to read or revise, it strongly demotivates you from jumping into it.
Secondly, It does not tax your brain. The important thing about writing is while we pen down important points, we tend to reflect on it. Thus, some traces are retained in our memory. The same does not go with computer style notes making.
Thirdly, Computer hides the bulkiness of notes from you. Thus, it never motivates you to revise them from time to time. When you see the copy lying in front of your eyes 24*7 then occasional flipping helps in quick revisions. This is not the same with the computer.
Therefore, digital notes making is suggested only if
1. candidate does not indiscriminately copy the whole para from article
2. Candidate makes bulleted notes of the article
3. Candidate revises them regularly every seventh day
4. Candidate uses ctrl-f in addictive fashion which would help him in interconnecting the concept
However, it is easier said than done. I have seen people sitting with thousands of files fortnight before the exam wondering on how to revise them in such short span of time and literally falling back on the Wizard.
I personally always go for handwritten notes. However, it also requires the second level of cataloging for quick revision and reference.It has its own set of questions like:
Q. Should I make notes in separate registers or one combined register for everything?
Q. Should I cut the newspaper articles or extract points from them?
Q. Should I maintain notes indexed by topic or indexed by dates?
We will deal with these questions along with tagging or cataloging in another blog post in detail.
Another question which often arise is, till when should I read the newspaper?
As the exam nears, people face the severe crunch of time and struggle hard to revise all that they have read. Thus, a natural question comes to the mind should I read the newspaper just two days before prelims or mains when I know the paper has already been set a month before.
My take is stop making notes from 25 days before prelims but read the newspaper till two weeks before prelims. Devote till only 40 minutes but just skim through headlines to get a feel of whats going on around. It helps in interconnecting with your current affairs news. And most importantly, you have to cover this for mains anyway. So why to leave it now. 40 minutes is a good break from your hour's long schedule so it helps in rejuvenating your nerve cells of the mind.
For mains, however, I suggest read it till the day of your exam. Many times, UPSC asks questions on prospective events or current issues which are progressing in the news. For example, Let us say, PM is scheduled to visit South Africa on the date of your examination. So UPSC may ask a question on south Africa relations leaving everyone stumped. Anyway, their task is not to select a candidate. Rather, the recruitment process focuses on eliminating the students. So for mains, reading the newspaper till the day of exam becomes important. However, one can stop making notes 30 days before the exam.
See there is a trade off. For the 40 to 60 minutes of investment in the newspaper, how many marks is it going to add to my overall score? How many questions can come from this period of the current affair? Would it enhance your knowledge of existing issues of current affairs? And how much boost it can give to your preparation? So one should take a decision on the basis on this probabilistic mathematics.
For Interview, I need not mention. However, the manner of reading the newspaper is a little bit different.
One question always peeved me during my preparation years which is "should I read a newspaper or should I read general books to diversify my knowledge?" Even today sometimes, I suffer from this dilemma. The newspaper gives you good enough information of multitude of issues from various spheres of knowledge. However, Book reading is a gratifying experience in its own way. The answer to this may differ from person to person. But from my general experience, I can decisively say, read one newspaper only and use the extra time to pick content and medium of your liking.
For instance, One may prefer to read all the books of one author one after other or watch youtube videos on great speeches or some other kind of infotainment. Instead of reading the second newspaper to diversify your knowledge, one must develop some domain specific expertise. This would help in developing a T in your knowledge base where you will have enough breadth of understanding of the issues and depth in some particular dimensions.
But reading one newspaper is also not very easy on a regular basis. That is why a large number of not-so-good coaching institutes have come up in the market selling the idea of "newspaper classes". I find it self-defeating and nonsense to attend these classes for the purpose of covering the newspaper. One may attend one session of such classes for the sake of understanding the chronology of the issue but from my experience, the existing coaching institutes are more damaging than rewarding to the students preparation.
Most of the students join these classes because they do not know what all kinds of news should they read? For this, I am presenting here a list of do's and don't. Let us begin with don't.
Don'ts
1. Issues of city or individual level importance or local items(to be read during Interview)
2. Issues of rape, violence, dacoity and all the negative news from general page 2-3-4-5 of standard newspapers.
3. Issues which are repeated too often that they have become daily bread of the media. For example: Anna Andolan which may be trending for months and months
4. Issues of pure politics
5. Issues of private organizations entering into pacts etc.
6. Sports issues of who win or who lost
7. General trivia
8. Repetitive issues like Syria war or Afghan violence unless something tectonic or transformational has not happened.
Do's
1. Focus on 6 pages of the newspaper namely, front page, editorial, op-ed, economics, international, and national issues.
2. Issues or events which are thematic in nature like article 356 or judicial overreach or Doping (WADA) should be captured
3. RBI or Finance Ministry or sectoral news items should be grabbed by the neck
4. National issues like social programs or case studies or investigative journalism should be read in depth
5. Policy or scheme advertisements should be paid attention
Every news should be tested on the touchstone of following questions before investing time into it.
1. Is this news important for our national social political economic or cultural progress?
2. Do I know enough of this issue?
3. What would be the impact of certain international development in India?
For The Hindu readers, the easy way of doing this is to download the Hindu daily digest and just read the news which is in it. Rest all is useless. For others in general, go online and pick the current event news items from the daily current event of the Insights or the Gktoday or IAS baba. Any of them will do. Come back to the newspaper and read those relevant items.
For express, similar standards along with some extra attention to "Explained page" may be paid.
For mint, capture the themes. second and third last page has some good articles but overall Mint misses on social and political issues. It is economics and data heavy newspaper.
Before that, I will take a pertinent question on which newspaper should one read?
In my opinion, The Hindu remains a universally accepted answer. However, Indian Express is picking up really fast and I find it much more exciting to read than the dull and repetitive coverage of The Hindu. So in the initial years, one may read The Hindu but after a certain time, it is advisable to switch to Express. Mint is also a content heavy choice which is more in-line with the current format of the exam but it is very data heavy. So instead of making it main plank, just read the select news articles as highlighted on Insights.
Nowadays, I read The Indian Express and I find it very rewarding.
One may ask, why reading the daily events news from insights won't suffice. The answer to this lies in the difference in the examination format of prelims, mains, and Interview. This is asnwered in the next post.
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