Journal Entry 9: Online Newsgathering
I am consistently astonished about the ways people get their media. The sheer number of different methods available is incredible, as is the variety in the quality of the information. I’ve held down a system for getting news pretty well over the last five years or so: I get local news off the Oregon Daily Emerald and the Eugene Weekly, but I probably only get three or four of those a week. I also listen to Oregon Public Radio (including NPR, PRI, BBC) for a variety of news, especially regional and national. For most national and international news I go online to the BBC World Edition, which is also fed to my Google homepage along with AP, Reuters, and other major news outlets.
But all of this tends to just be top news, meaning that it is usually covered only somewhat satisfactorily. Due to this, I also get my news off a variety of in-depth online sources that combine news articles along with independent and open commentary. These sources tend to give better coverage because you can end up being linked to five to 10 sources, each with their own perspective and information. For example, I get a lot of my technology news off Slashdot, which is a technology compblog. I might see a dozen different stories, each with their own links to media and commentary, as well as an option to add my own voice. I get news trivia off BoingBoing, Internet news off Digg and General/Political news off Something Awful.
Of course, this might seem like a veritable onslaught of media, and perhaps it is, but I manage to deal with it pretty quickly each morning.
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