I'm a big fan of Nassim Taleb - the philosopher/statistician/trader best known for his books "The Black Swan" and "Fooled by randomness". It's clear Taleb isn't one for poring through newspapers on a daily basis. In his books, he basically claims that newspapers are full of nothing but noise, and contain nothing of real informational quality.
Contrast this with Warren Buffet, a man who has invested in several newspaper companies and commented on the value of reading them in his shareholder letters.
Who's right? I know finance professionals in certain roles are almost obligated to keep up to date with the latest news via the paper or whatever website, but do people think there's any merit to Taleb's claims that newspapers are basically worthless?
There's no doubt that there's merit to some of what Taleb is saying. His comments re the news remind me of the adage that the news is about things that happen, not things that don't happen. This situation can, at best, be misleading for regular readers (i.e. that aunt who always deals in useless platitudes like "the world sure is a mess these days")
Something that I find to yield much more value (in terms of understanding the world) than reading the newspaper, is sitting down alone (before or after work) with a pen and paper and working through some logical flow about current events, or just the world in general (demographics, politics, etc). I used to typically allocate an hour each morning for the news, but now I do a 40/20, or 30/30 split of newspaper/magazine/internet reading with pen and paper thinking. It's amazing the things you can figure out, and the incisive questions you can formulate by drawing solely on knowledge you already possess.
The answer to "who's right" really depends, as you allude to in the OP, on your job. Regardless of your job, I think any finance professional is best advised to look at the reams of data on BBG, and stay away from ANY pop finance commentary. Let's be real, most of the day-to-day 'analysis' in the WSJ or FT is bullshit. Whether you use newspapers to understand things beyond your circle of competence is your call, and really more personality-dependent than anything else. I suspect no one gives a fuck, but for what it's worth, I prefer white papers, comprehensive reports, and long-form reporting to the 'jolt' of the daily newspaper
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