News sources

Interesting point for discussion.

I've been online for many years, and print news was replaced by the Internet for me long ago. In the case of a newspaper versus the web sites, the experience is mostly the same, except that it's faster to flip through a series of aggregated pages/articles that are of some specific area of interest, and you don't get newsprint all of your fingers :)

Radio still holds some interest for me, but only because of the different method of consumption. When driving in the car, radio can be useful for immediate current events (things that happen too fast to make it into a podcast), and of course traffic/weather type information. However, I rarely ever listen to traditional radio outside of the car.

Streaming Internet radio has some interest for its content value, but even then I prefer podcasts for their more directed content (I subscribe to podcasts that more specifically interest me, so I know what I'm getting). The only Internet Radio I tend to listen to are background music type stations on occasion when I just want some smooth jazz or ambient type music.

The mainstream TV media holds little interest for me as well, and I seldom visit the CNN or CBC Newsworld type channels. I do watch the local morning news show when I get up every morning, partly because it provides local content, but also because there's a non-news-related flavour to it (like most typical morning shows).

Ironically, while this is on the TV I'm usually also sitting at the dining room table with my coffee and Powerbook getting caught up on the other regular RSS feeds that I visit.

For me, my primary RSS rotation in the morning includes:

CTV News
BBC News
Toronto Star
Toronto CityNews
The Register
Wired
Engadget
Boing Boing
iLounge (of course)

I generally skim through the headlines/abstracts in each of these in Safari, taking time to read specific articles that are of interest to me and just quickly glossing over the rest. The more techie feeds like Engadget sometimes only get checked every three or four days as opposed to every morning.

My Podcasts tend to be less of the current affairs variety, and more along the lines of interest news... Things like Slashdot Review, CBC Quirks and Quarks, CBC Toronto This Week, and the CityNews Daily Video podcasts (that last one being specific daily news, but I tend to just download it in case I'm on the go and don't have time to catch up on the local news -- most of the time it doesn't get watched on the iPod itself).

My wife has this addiction to TV news. Its on constantly...nearly all day. Its mostly just a bunch of small "news bites", often the daily coverage of ongoing sagas of various sensational, unusual incidents (child abductions, serial killers, etc) in other parts of the country. I'm sick of it. All she sees of the world is constant dystopia, and I'm seeing it affect her attitude toward the world. I've been urging her to cut back.

Foxfire came with an RSS feed from the BBC, so I check that daily. It still usually has very little to do with my life, but at least its relevant to the world around me. We get Time magazine, and that provides some depth of discussion of the issues that is missing from TV or webpages.

I also check tech news via Digg, Wired, & The Register.

Newspapers are but one medium in decline. Instead today's news consumer prefers the readily-made (and free) content available through the paper's website. There has also been a surge in user-defined services, such as Newsvine (http://www.newsvine.com/). It is argued that this democratisation of news services will lead to a decline in the quality of the journalism and story content.Interesting point. I work for a large regional newspaper company - Rural Press (http://www.ruralpress.com/) - and not long ago I attended a seminar, where one of the topics was the increasing trend for people to get their news online.

To summarise some of the main points that were made at the seminar: in simple terms, newspapers arent going anywhere anytime soon. Theyre here to stay, for a long while at least.

For many people, the time it takes to get online and gather their news is outweighed by the time-tested tradition of having a newspaper in your hands with information that is still fresh (my paper publishes three times a week, Monday, Wednesday and Friday).

People are used to newspapers, and not everyone has instant access to the internet. Many people still prefer to get the paper to read current news rather than having to be up-to-the minute 24/7.

Photographs will never look as good online as in print.

Also, most newspapers do not publish all of their content online. My paper posts the first paragraph or two of the main articles in the latest edition, with a line Full story in SHN 10/04/2007 or whatever the day may be at the end.

Morning:
The New York Times
The New Yorker
The Straits Times

Other:
The Economist

I rarely watch TV, news or otherwise. I never have the TV on during the day. It's either music, podcasts or nothing. I do record the half hour local news every day and play it back in fast forward so I can stop at the stories I'm interested in like Anna Nicole Smith & the racoon on the bridge. No seriously, I just look for stories that affect us directly that our local & state Government are screwing up this week. ;)

I don't buy any magazines, and haven't for many years as they are just all full of rubbish. Mens magazines are different, and I did subscribe to The Bulletin, but found I just didn't get around to reading it most of the time and cancelled it. I buy the paper once a week, get the free TV guide to again hand pick any shows I wish to record. I always watch 60 minutes as I find their stories are mostly interesting. I'm also addicted to Desperate Housewives, but that isn't falling into the news sector. :D

Podcasts I download are:

Rock & Roll Geek Show (that's for fun)
ABC News Nightline (for World News)
Triple J Highlights (Social issues)
Andrew Denton (a bloody good interviewer)
Monica Attard ABC Local Radio (mostly Political & Current Affairs interviews)

I do glance over the online news, but again hand pick what I want to read and wouldn't spend too much time on it.

fox news - pretty much every news station is biased to the left, with the exeption of fox, which as we all have heard from various left extremists, is right. but i'd rather watch that then any liberal garbage.

Radio - The savage nation, Bill O' Reilly, Laura Ingraham.

New York Daily News. - how do you read the times?

^ your 11? wow. i'm 14 and quite frankly, am suprised you didn't say "y watchh neting else, MTV is te best!!!! OMG LAGUNA BEACH!!! good to see literate kids these days.

But anyway, i don't read my local newspaper, i like to read the daily news or post, times for me is a bit too focused on insulting Bush every chance they get.

New York Daily News. - how do you read the times?

The New York Times is read from front to back if that is what you wanted to know. The words are bigger with much less sensationalism than the daily news. the words are also spelled correctly.

^ your 11? wow. i'm 14 and quite frankly, am suprised you didn't say "y watchh neting else, MTV is te best!!!! OMG LAGUNA BEACH!!! good to see literate kids these days.

At 11 o'clock. pohatu is 17.

Tech News:
iLounge
digg
engadget
Wired Magazine
Popular Science Magazine
EGM (I got it for free somehow...)
the occasional joystiq or dsfanboy too...

Other News:
Local TV
digg
Local newspaper
I read anything that's around me, so if someone leaves a Newsweek or something, I've got that too.

It's been an interesting discussion so far. From what I have read a lot of people differ from myself. I am an avid newspaper reader. The papers I read are varied, in fact it's usually a combination of either The Times, Guardian or Independent. Personally, I find printed text easier to read and comprehend. Factors such as bias and context are more easily deduced from paper, as opposed to screen.

Web interfaces tend to be busy. From adverts to flashing banners, distractions are plentiful. This is rather off-putting and I pine for the simple black-and-white no nonsense approach shown by the printed press. Someone mentioned it above that pictures look far better on paper than on screen. I whole heartedly agree with that. There's no sense of presence with images that appear on screen. The best example to illustrate this is The Guardian. Each day they use the central spread to print a massive picture across both pages. It's often my first stop when browsing through the paper itself. I've even sent my little sister to school with a couple showing volcanoes, which she was studying.

Usually the best online content is restricted to pay-per-view subscriptions services. The Economist.com and the Financial Times are the cases in point here. Business men will promptly shell out the required fee, but for a low-income soul like me it can be quite a hardship. It's lucky that my institution carries the related print editions of both publications; I thank them for that! I tend to think of these two publications as bibles. If they don't print it, then it's probably not worth knowing about.

Regarding BBC News, I have mixed feelings. Often the site proposes a good snap shot of news items, yet I find the detail a little lacking. The story is often broke into ridiculously small paragraphs that make it easy to read but leaves the detail-hungry consumer wanting a little more. Still, it's a free service which is vastly popular, not just in this country, but around the world.

I was expecting many frequenters of this board to read technology news, this is an iPod forum after all! Also, I didn't expect folks to be using RSS feeds this religiously!

i have a couple of RSS feeds that i view using Shrook (http://www.utsire.com/shrook/), mostly the tech sites, dpreview, a few blogs and more flickr groups and people.

apparently with my new phone (SE W880i) i can copy the RSS content over and read it on my phone, but i haven't quite got to that bit of the manual yet :)

anyway shrook is really convenient in that i don't have to fire up safari to read the stories (most of the time)

Web interfaces tend to be busy. From adverts to flashing banners, distractions are plentiful. This is rather off-putting and I pine for the simple black-and-white no nonsense approach shown by the printed press. Someone mentioned it above that pictures look far better on paper than on screen. I whole heartedly agree with that. There's no sense of presence with images that appear on screen. The best example to illustrate this is The Guardian. Each day they use the central spread to print a massive picture across both pages. It's often my first stop when browsing through the paper itself. I've even sent my little sister to school with a couple showing volcanoes, which she was studying

You speak the truth.. I try to read a newspaper everyday, usually the Guardian, partly because it easily is the nicest designed one :D. And it is so much nicer to have the print in front of you, and get all the supplements together rather than searching around on a website.

I often buy the Economist too, although I haven't read it since I've been back from uni. Will sometimes check The Washington Post and New York Times online. Oh and the Private Eye, that.. sort of counts as news.. satirical news.

I was saddened to hear the news that the purchase of the Wall Street Journal by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. is imminent. Lax controls on the US press has made the takeover entirely possible. While this has strict atavistic links, it is still a worry that one person can dictate a sizeable portion of the press. The current incarnation has a certain prestige and one can only wonder whether this acquisition would go somewhat to tarnishing a once great publication.

Further damnation of Murdoch can be applied once one has understood the failings of his current media outlets. Throughout time News Corp. has carefully selected both language and air time for certain stories, with the aim of maximising its president's business interests. Evidence for this was presented in today's (02/07/07) Guardian. It stated:

In October 2003, the nonpartisan Programme on International Policy Attitudes published a study titles Misperceptions, the Media and the Iraq War. It found that 60% of Americans believed at least one of the following: clear evidence had been found of links between Iraq and al-Qaida; weapons of mass destruction had been found (!) in Iraq; world public opinion favoured the US going to war with Iraq.

FOX's sympathetic coverage of the rather pathetic George W. Bush is disconcerting. Not only because it has a disproportionate effect on potential voters, but also as it indicates that Washington will remain at arm's length in any takeover negotiations. This is an example of capitalism and kudos taking precedence over common sense and rational fear.

Not even Prince's latest album could coax me into buying the Daily Heil today. I am beginning to regret my decision; damn Sunday trading laws!

^^^What about global and local current events? I read tech news too, but that wasn't the first thing I thought of when I saw the title of this thread.