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indigozealBelow is a response to an old Writer's Block question on which I narrowly missed the deadline. I can't access the entry anymore, so in an attempt to reconsctruct the question:
What's your main source for news?
Previously, my main source of info was TV news, but I got rid of cable six months ago. Even the slacker's ideal of watching Daily Show/Colbert Report had fallen by the wayside long previous after I caught a particularly nasty "Better Know Your Districts" segment, where the representative was honestly trying to answer questions and Colbert just kept tripping over every inadvertent word slip he made.
I used to click a link on the bottom news bar of Bing if I saw a term that grabbed my interest, but it turned out that their bubbling of my demographic meant that I was getting nothing but celebrity pregnancy stories. I dropped Bing altogether in favor of DuckDuckGo after learning more about their tracking/bubbling practices, so the net doesn't push much news my way.
I do check Shakesville, but the blog had to buckle down on comm rules to ferret out trolls, and it's consequently become a bit of an echo chamber on matters down even to everyone's taste in cinema. It's still useful information-wise but requires discernment.
I don't like where I'm living right now, so I feel no need to be connected to the local community. The quality of the newspaper writing is horrific up here anyhow. I glance at the front page through the vending machine at the post office, I'll take a glance if a copy's around and I have some time, but that's it. Time? The New Yorker? I'll pop in once in a while, but their Very Serious Person bias, as Krugman would say, is frustrating. (Yes, of course Krugman and Shakesville are built on bias - but they realize that they're taking a side on the issues and therefore make an effort at arguing their cases. Time etc. assume that their viewpoint is the neutral baseline and present their bias as unassailable fact, above need for argument or evidence. Additionally, if you read, say, Time's Techland blog or the New Yorker's book blog, you realize that some of the reporters at these prestigious institutions are shockingly, deeply ignorant in their chosen fields.)
So, in brief: I hear about news stories if the boards on which I lurk or Shakesville or Paul Krugman mention them. This seems ignorant - and I sound like a left-wing version of a Fox News devotee at times here in my denunciation of mainstream media - but I don't feel like I'm missing all that much by not being plugged in. The masses are powerless now anyhow, right? The recession will end when the corporations get better and not the workers? So it makes little difference whether I'm up-to-the-second on the latest outrages.
.
What's your main source for news?
Previously, my main source of info was TV news, but I got rid of cable six months ago. Even the slacker's ideal of watching Daily Show/Colbert Report had fallen by the wayside long previous after I caught a particularly nasty "Better Know Your Districts" segment, where the representative was honestly trying to answer questions and Colbert just kept tripping over every inadvertent word slip he made.
I used to click a link on the bottom news bar of Bing if I saw a term that grabbed my interest, but it turned out that their bubbling of my demographic meant that I was getting nothing but celebrity pregnancy stories. I dropped Bing altogether in favor of DuckDuckGo after learning more about their tracking/bubbling practices, so the net doesn't push much news my way.
I do check Shakesville, but the blog had to buckle down on comm rules to ferret out trolls, and it's consequently become a bit of an echo chamber on matters down even to everyone's taste in cinema. It's still useful information-wise but requires discernment.
I don't like where I'm living right now, so I feel no need to be connected to the local community. The quality of the newspaper writing is horrific up here anyhow. I glance at the front page through the vending machine at the post office, I'll take a glance if a copy's around and I have some time, but that's it. Time? The New Yorker? I'll pop in once in a while, but their Very Serious Person bias, as Krugman would say, is frustrating. (Yes, of course Krugman and Shakesville are built on bias - but they realize that they're taking a side on the issues and therefore make an effort at arguing their cases. Time etc. assume that their viewpoint is the neutral baseline and present their bias as unassailable fact, above need for argument or evidence. Additionally, if you read, say, Time's Techland blog or the New Yorker's book blog, you realize that some of the reporters at these prestigious institutions are shockingly, deeply ignorant in their chosen fields.)
So, in brief: I hear about news stories if the boards on which I lurk or Shakesville or Paul Krugman mention them. This seems ignorant - and I sound like a left-wing version of a Fox News devotee at times here in my denunciation of mainstream media - but I don't feel like I'm missing all that much by not being plugged in. The masses are powerless now anyhow, right? The recession will end when the corporations get better and not the workers? So it makes little difference whether I'm up-to-the-second on the latest outrages.
.
