February 08, 2005
With the exception of important events, Quick and easily digestible news is all I need.
In my youth my family lived abroad in Asia, and thus my initial exposure to news was through BBC international.
In my youth my family lived abroad in Asia, and thus my initial exposure to news was through BBC international. However, upon moving back to the United States, my family always gathered around the dinner table to eat while simultaneously watching Dan Rather and the Nightly News. Although some might find this a bit odd in that it takes away from "family time", the nightly activity never actually took on this negative form. Some of my fondest memories are family debates about current events being reported. Until I matured, I was guilty of having a narrow view of what roles the newspaper was supposed to serve.
Until around the age of 16 my interests with regard to the newspaper ranged from High School Lacrosse rankings for a given week, to the standings of the Orioles with regard to the playoff (or, in their case, the wildcard) race. Soon thereafter I decided to follow the advice of my father and (at least) read the front page of the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Washington Post, each morning while eating breakfast. This soon turned into a habit, which has now been nearly replaced by my daily viewing of the headlines at the respective websites of the aforementioned newspapers. It is simply easier to glimpse the headlines while checking one's email on the run then to pull out a newspaper in hardcopy and scroll through the pages in search of an interesting article. I do, for the most part, enjoy reading a newspaper more than a web page reprint of the same article. Typically at lunch I take a glance at The Daily Princetonian for pleasure readings, and then try my luck on the New York Times crossword puzzle of the day.
Although I find the internet to be very convenient when I am trying to quickly view some current events during the day, I always make sure to read the op-ed section of the Wall Street Journal. Reading news in itself is interesting, however, I make sure to balance that out with sources of news that intersperse opinion within the “objective” information it is presenting. I truly believe that I am better able to absorb news when I have been exposed to several different viewpoints with regard to it. My main source of “opinionated news” is a daily news briefing from the Stratfor Intelligence Services (http://web2.stratfor.com/prem), which provides a comprehensive overview of such areas as intelligence, terrorism updates, general international relations, as well as economic news and forecasts.
Aside from the Internet and newspapers, I rarely ever view the nightly news at this point unless I am at home. Whenever I watch television, which is rare, I make a concerted flip through CNN and MSNBC for a few minutes, even if I do not happen to be in the mood for that genre of programming. Looking back upon my last few years of college, I can say with all fairness that there actually seem to be few occasions when I ever watch television at this point unless it is for a special event (election, major international event, sports championship, etc.).
Posted by avita at 01:31 AM | Comments (1)