The capital of the United States is Washington, D.C., but the capital of America is New York City, wrote the author Henry James.

This political and cultural distinction is present in the New York Times, a phenomenal newspaper that I have subscribed to for the past few years. When I read the NYT, I get a sense of America that cannot be found in other news sources.

In the Times, a reader finds matchless, in-depth coverage; a sampling of the world’s most accomplished columnists; and the cultural who-ness and what-ness of American and global society.

However, the reader will find sparse representation of what it means to be an ordinary American. The NYT features elite voices that certainly have pens in one hand and pulses in the other, but these voices—albeit diverse on the surface—tend to have things in common. The writers tend to be industry leaders, graduates or professors of prestigious schools, or celebrated figures of their respective causes. These characteristics, in and of themselves, are not bad, but when they crowd out ordinary voices and their points of view, then the news about the haves and the have nots is almost always told by the haves.

John Lewis described ordinary people as the people who didn’t make headline news but were the wellspring for those who did. By focusing on the crème de la crème, and by losing sight of the salt of the earth, we forget about the workhorses who pull their weight when the show horses lose their luster.

I decided to cancel the New York Times, even though they counter-offered an affordable rate for another year.

The following week, I cancelled the San Antonio Express-News. It’s also owned by Hearst, but I cancelled the SAEN for reasons related to quality and bias.

For news, I give a small monthly donation to a nonprofit newspaper. I’ve also taken on my neighborhood association’s newsletter. I’m reading “free” news sources like Axios, AP News, Reuters, NPR/TPR and the local TV stations—among others, but I’m losing interest, and I’m weeding these sources out little by little. I’m liking my neighborhood newsletter more and more.

The news helps me know the world, but it doesn’t always help me understand it. I wrote about this conceptual difference in a recent blog post. I’m running with this concept, and that’s hard to do, since I’ve been a news reader since elementary school.

If by abandoning my want and means of knowledge, will I then be able to better understand the world? That’s the question I’m asking; and abandoning the news is the method by which I think I will answer that question, in part.