When I read news, I don't necessary read the major headlines. I gravitate toward the articles which pique my interest (curiosity), the ones that make me go: "Wait... why?"
So reading the news is like an investigation of sorts.
Oftentimes what I come out learning has little to do with the subject of the story, but rather a new word, a new concept, or a new way of connecting bits of information I already know. I find that a lot of my learning (or the most active, driven part of my learning) has to do with connection and contextualization. I feel that what I know tends to be scattered, random almost, and what I need to do is to make them coalesce, to draw them in before they evaporate from me.
I feel the same way about thoughts/feelings, and expressing them in words before they go stale (and are, in a sense, gone from me). I always hold off, to see if what I want to say can be any more meaningful (better substantiated by experience, better connected to other thoughts/feelings/situations, better clarification of context, etc. etc.)
Re-reading my old entries, it seems that I used to not have this problem. My entries were cross-sections of then-present experiences, however jumbled and lacking in continuity. Maybe I have become too cautiously intellectual, or maybe I'm just too afraid to slice through the overwhelming knot of experience, having resigned myself to picking out the threads.