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How Millennials Get News

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Re: How Millennials Get News

#41

Post by johnny99 »

coldpie wrote: post #34
puranjay wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

News has been able to sell itself with the dictum that you "have to know what's happening!" In reality, you really don't need to know what's happening around the world. Seriously. 95% of the news you read does not impact you in any meaningful way. Most of it is negative (which is the very nature of news) and too little of it concerns you in your immediate surroundings. So yeah. You don't need to news. At least not 90…

> News has been able to sell itself with the dictum that you "have to know what's happening!" Yeah. A couple years ago when I was about 24, I decided I "should be more informed" because that's what adults do, so I bought a year subscription to Minneapolis's major newspaper with the goal of reading it mostly every day. I did for a while, but quickly realised that I didn't give a shit about almost anything in the paper…

Give up on that newspaper, not news.

With a few exceptions (NYTimes, WSJ) newspapers tend to go just deep enough to distract, but not deep enough to inform. Read The Atlantic or Salon or other long-form stuff, read the more substantive news links off HN, but read.

Your initial instinct was a good one, reading well enriches you. Not reading makes you boring. And while I think it's profoundly worth it in the long run, learning about the world isn't necessarily supposed to make you happy.

Re: How Millennials Get News

#42

Post by cweiss »

Sven7 wrote: post #25
brc wrote: post #13

The reverse of this is of course baby boomer generations who hate what the news has become (TV and Newspaper) yet slavishly consume it anyway, because of a lifetime habit. Whenever I see an older relative frothing about some stupid article in the newspaper, or some pointless piece on TV - I just say 'why not switch it off? Why buy the paper anyway?' I don't watch the news or read newspapers anymore, unless I happen t…

It's not that simple. Capturing people's attention is now a well studied science. The addiction is engineered. The people who are addicted(or "engaged") to their media streams whether social or main stream need the same sort of help any addict needs to kick the habit. Since the addiction thus far hasn't caused lung cancer, driving accidents, violent behavior etc we can all continue to 1. make money of it and 2. tell…

Not to mention that the same people who would be relied on to spread any information about the harm of consuming said media is... said media.

Re: How Millennials Get News

#43

Post by angersock »

cbd1984 wrote: post #27
angersock wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The few, the proud, the unwilling to be quietly wrong in their own corner. You need us. :)

Nobody needs the people who harass others and attempt to ridicule them into silence.

Incorrect without further qualification.

There are people in the set of "others" who very much deserve harassment and ridicule--consider people actively working against the common good, like Scientologists or other online trolls or robber barons or city bosses.

Re: How Millennials Get News

#45

Post by Spooky23 »

cbd1984 wrote: post #30
Spooky23 wrote: post #6

Let's be real here, national mainstream electronic media is somewhere between outright propaganda (yesterday's revelation and pictures of ISIS cross dressing soldiers retreating) and inane press release political fodder (sources in the White House report some BS that everyone knew anyway), and tabloid stuff. In the old days 1994, there was at least some journalistic content on the news with Peter Jennings. If you giv…

> In the old days 1994, there was at least some journalistic content on the news with Peter Jennings. And people from a prior generation laughed at the idea of Peter Jennings being 'journalistic' and pinned their ideals on Brinkley and Huntley. Basically, this statement says nothing and means nothing, because it's just a generational marker, nothing more.

That's a total gloss-over.

Broadcast news started out as an FCC mandate for licensing purpose, and a differentiator where more quality made a difference in the performance of the network. As the number of channels increased and mandates decreased, they shifted to a more "entertainy" format to keep viewers.

This stuff is all available online. Look at the information density of a random broadcast in 1965, 1975, etc. Signal goes down, noise goes up.

Re: How Millennials Get News

#47

Post by puranjay »

mycroft-holmes wrote: post #35
frostmatthew wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 95% of the news you read does not impact you in any meaningful way Maybe the world is better when people care about what impacts other people, not just themselves.

I don't think selfishness is what the parent commenter is referring to. A great example of "news" not impacting me in any meaningful way was a week or two ago when there was breaking news about two alpacas on the loose. Meanwhile, net neutrality passed with a 300+ page document the public wasn't allowed to see at the time.

Right. The news that actually has an impact on the world is limited and usually accessible through non-news mediums (this site, Reddit, etc.). In fact, mainstream media often doesn't cover the news that really impacts you (the net-neutrality debate had pitiful coverage).

On the other hand, Obama not saluting some marines or Michel Bachmann saying some dumb thing has no real impact on the world, mine or others.

Re: How Millennials Get News

#48

Post by coldpie »

asr wrote: post #38
coldpie wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> News has been able to sell itself with the dictum that you "have to know what's happening!" Yeah. A couple years ago when I was about 24, I decided I "should be more informed" because that's what adults do, so I bought a year subscription to Minneapolis's major newspaper with the goal of reading it mostly every day. I did for a while, but quickly realised that I didn't give a shit about almost anything in the paper…

I don't care about how the war in Iraq is going.... I don't care how many people are dying in a genocide on the other side of the world. I am sure this is not quite how you mean it, but to me this comes across as saying "if it doesn't affect my life, or my friends, then who cares." You should care about things that don't directly impact your life -- partly because you can make a difference in these things, sometimes,…

> I am sure this is not quite how you mean it, but to me this comes across as saying "if it doesn't affect my life, or my friends, then who cares."

No, that sounds about right. I don't blame others for caring, or think they shouldn't care. In fact, I'm glad they do. But I don't.

> You should care about things that don't directly impact your life -- partly because you can make a difference in these things, sometimes, if you get involved.

Fixing the military industrial complex or some other country's fucked up government isn't really on my TODO list. For better or worse, it's not how I want to spend my life.

Re: How Millennials Get News

#49

Post by proksoup »

cbd1984 wrote: post #26
proksoup wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trolls cross the lines. "If you don't agree with the person who made this video why are you posting here?!?! Get a life troll!" Trolls is the heroes of the internet, the diversity.

Trolls are reinforcing the bubble by "proving" that everyone outside of it is purely an asshole with no intent to have a conversation, merely to insult and ridicule and try to cause people to leave the forum.

The problem is the labeling of them as trolls, is what I meant.

There is no such thing as trolls, that person you call a troll is making a joke or making a point and you're too far inside your own bubble to not call them an asshole.

Re: How Millennials Get News

#50

Post by lazaroclapp »

e12e wrote: post #33
johnny99 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very much agree. When I was a kid I watched one (and only one) of the three network news channels, read The New York Times + the local paper, and that was about it--this was before the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine, so talk radio hadn't yet metastasized. It was hard to get alternative opinions in either direction, even if you wanted to. Compared to that social media is a cornucopia/vomitorium of diversity. Alternat…

Managing to challenge ones preconceptions is always going to take work. Also note that for someone getting their news from FOX News, the New York Times is a left-wing outlier. News is pretty terrible in Norway too, but I always feel like I'm in a sitcom whenever I visit the US/Canada. Where BBC and the Guardian appear as bastions against the establishment -- while they of course are very much mainstream. On the other…

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