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I would caution against speed-reading through everything. One way or another, you will need to "learn to read" academic literature (most likely in your second year). But there's really (at least) three types of reading that you will need to do:
1) Read and understand both the main points and nuances of the article in order to be able to regurgitate them at some future (e.g., field exam, discuss it during a presentation of your own work, etc).
2) Read in order to learn how to be a better academic writer.
3) Read in order to assess whether or not an article is worth a more thorough review in order to better inform your own research.
The "speed reading" techniques that I'm familiar with are extremely useful for #3, marginally useful for #1 (nuance is often a causality of reading too quickly), and counterproductive to #2.
My impression is that second year students focus too much on #1 (as they do have a ton of material to cover on their own for field courses) while third focus on #3. But what frustrates a lot of fourth and fifth year students is that they don't really get around to figuring out that #2 (reading to become a good academic writer) until they've already started trying to put together a dissertation and job market paper. And that's part of what frustrates a lot of PhD candidates.
Being a good academic writer is not the same as writing a good term paper for an undergraduate seminar (or even a senior thesis) or scoring well on the GRE AWA. There is a very delicate balance that needs to be struck between presenting a novel idea in a way that will be readily accessible to people who are accustomed to digesting academic literature in a recognizable form. The most prolific economists are those who can apply good data analysis and sound economic theory in order to present complicated concepts in simple, easy-to-digest terms. And it's a skill that great academic writers (e.g., David Card) make look easy, but is actually quite difficult to master. You acquire that skill not only be practicing, but by observing how prolific, successful economists express themselves.
The second year (when you'll be most tempted to get through assigned articles as quickly as possible) is really the ideal time to start studying how to be a good writer. And becoming a good academic writer requires more than just reading McCloskey once or twice and making sure to run a spell-check.