Over the years, thanks to the Internet, my news reading habits have switched from a handful of newspapers, to many RSS feeds. A couple of months back, we talked about mobile news and the usefulness of apps to the delivery of news content. As I wrote then, the apps in my phone are for the BBC, the New York Times, and NPR news. All solid sources.
Those are not my only news sources, however. I still read a print newspaper, La Repubblica (warning, Italian), and occasionally the Wall Street Journal, when I can borrow it from a colleague. Maybe I grew up in another time, as I still like to hold a newspaper in my hands with my espresso in the morning.
Interestingly, there is very little Web browsing of news in my daily habit. I will read articles shared by people in my network, yet I don't have any news site bookmarked or syndicated. Perhaps it's because I have the mobile apps?
What I want to learn aboutNews is important to me.
World news is particularly important to me. My family lives all over the world -- France, Italy, Japan, the US -- so I tend to be attuned to local happenings in many areas. Plus I have friends in any corner of the globe, one of the lovely byproducts of having spent many years building community online. Did you know that you often hear about US news abroad that you don't hear about here?
News commentary in different languages. Yes, there is definitely a way that things get lost in translation. Keeping up with news sources in different languages allows me to get a stronger sense of how people articulate their challenges in other countries.
I'm interested in economics, and the political shenanigans the world over. There are many a trend you can infer from figuring out who has means, knowledge, and power. These also happen to be the underpinnings of every social structure.
Making better decisionsI believe being informed about what's going on allows us to make better decisions in the areas where we have a direct influence. Getting the macro picture enables the micro movements in our daily lives. I didn't always think that way.
I remember at one point thinking that newspaper made for excellent material for cleaning windows in my apartment, for example. Other times indeed. I could not imagine a world without journalists and reporters looking to inform us. Not to win a Pulitzer, to help us see what's going on.
I have tremendous respect for reporters like Christiane Amanpour. Quoting her when someone asked her why she still does what she does, she said:
I do it because I remain convinced that good journalism still matters. If the storytellers don't do this, then the bad guys win. We live in a society after all, not in a marketplace, and in a society people are the software.
People matter and so does what happens to them.
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What are your news sources? Have you migrated mostly to online feeds? What are the pros and cons of mobile news in your view? Is there a print newspaper left in your mix?
© 2010 Valeria Maltoni. All rights reserved.