Monday, June 7, 2010

News gatherer

Currently, I get news, nationally and locally, from the internet. Nationally, I like to go to the Daily Beast everyday and look at their "cheat sheet", which are "must reads from all over." Also, I look at Huffington Post and receive news stories from Common Dreams, a progressive organization. For local events I go to the webpages of The State and The Augusta Chronicle.

Very rarely do I watch television news. It mostly focuses on crime and weather. Around here, in the CSRA, the quality of television news is, sadly, pedestrian.

As for as how I perceive the world I suppose through a liberal, progressive lens by looking at Huffington Post and Common Dreams. However, their headlines are from major news organizations like AP and The New York Times, so I'm not sure if they're biased or not. I guess the reporter or editor does get to choose what's reported on, but sometimes issues scream for ink like the Gulf disaster, though what you choose to focus on in the situation may show your biases. On the otherhand, for the most part I can see the reporter showing two sides to every story in the majority of articles I read, sometimes to the detriment of the situations and people involved. Like currently, most new stories covering the oil spill have set up the us vs. them scenario: BP vs. gulf coast residents. Often there are three or four or even more sides to a story!

We defintely gather information differently then we used to 25 years ago, especially my generation, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. I mean just because someone bought a paper didn't mean they read the whole thing. They could have just browsed the sports section. Like the internet we choose what we look at.

I pay a great deal of attention to the news, especially national, but also internationally, because I like to know what is going on and I feel I am in control when I learn all the facts about a story. I'm also interested in possibly becoming a journalist so that is another factor.

I recently chatted with Lesley Jane Seymour the editor of More(the lifestyle magazine for women over 40) on Facebook and here is what she had to share with me about journalism:

Look into digital. Print is going to dry up. Learn how to code and become a great journalist. Then you'll have it all. Columbia is offering interesting degrees in digital journalism or maybe it's a course you can take. That's the wave of the future. But it's a great profession if you love to write.

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