How does the author respond to people's interest in the news as shown in paragraph 3 of Walden?

Thoreau does
not show much interest in the news. He gently pokes funs at the people who need to read
everything in the newspaper every day. He states that, in contrast:

I am sure that I never read any memorable news in a newspaper.

He calls what is typically reported in the newspaper
"gossip." Once you have read of one person's eyes being gouged out, one person
murdered or robbed, one house burned down and one train wreck, you hardly need to read about
another, Thoreau argues. They are all the same:

If you are
acquainted with the principle, what do you care for a myriad instances and
applications?

To Thoreau, reading newspapers diverts
people's attention from what is truly important in life: it is a distraction. We should
contemplate our souls and the eternal instead. It is preferable, he asserts, to quietly dwell on
what is unchanging rather than seeking the latest newspaper sensation:

When we are unhurried and wise, we perceive that only great and
worthy things have any permanent and absolute existence,that petty fears and petty pleasures are
but the shadow of the reality.