During the last presidential election, my nephew John Pool suggested the informed voter should not read just one source. That’s when at John’s suggestion I began using Google News. I really like the ease of having one topic being covered in a collection of newspapers. I receive email headlines from WSJ, CNN, and MSNBC.

Another source of news for me is Military.com. I receive by email daily the Military.com the Early Brief. This I learned about while David E. was in Afghanistan and appreciated the military coverage that is often lacking in other sources.

Interesting articles come my way via the WSJ’s Tomorrow’s Columns Today. Again perhaps not “news” as we usually think of it, but great stuff to read!

The summary is that my news comes from varied online sources, NPR, and PBS.

Hollywoodia Brangelina

with statements of the climates within which each thrives. I’m not a biologist, so I’ll let others carry on from here.

Excuse? If I need one, it seems to me that the electorate has no long-term memory, and daily news in whatever form contributes to that.

Other news sources: Judy, and whatever news TV she has on when I’m nearby. Jay Leno, sometimes. Bits of news from radio, or other people talking. I once read that for every serious primary news reader/listener, there were three or four people who got news through those people. Some days I am thus Judy’s satellite for news, at least for fast breaking news.

When my concentration was better, I got some of my news, the kind that nobody calls news, from Scientific American.

Very little comes to me online. I believe Judy’s answer would be much different. In a competitive “current events” quiz, she would leave me in the dust. In a “since last election” news quiz, I think I could give her some competition.

I read the paper at work when I’m in the breakroom, or just need to get away from my desk. I also read any eye-catching headlines on MSN when I go on the internet (MSN is my homepage). For the most part, I agree with Dave S. (Shocking! lol j/k Dave ) I find the media just wants to sensationalize everything and they are way too concerned with the shock factor of reporting rather than real news. The whole Mel Gibson thing recently comes to mind. I do not know what he did, I didn’t choose to read about it, but I saw several headlines about it and heard his name mentioned on news stations while flipping through the stations.

Reading Dave’s comment gave me information about Brangelina that I did not previously know. lol I do read the Time magazine that comes here weekly when it catches my eye, and I will read the newspaper front to back when I am at my Mom’s or Grandma’s on Sunday. For the most part, though, I don’t follow the gossip and that is what the “news” seems to be anymore.

I do also listen to NPR occationally (my boyfriend is an avid listener) and he fills me in on a lot of what is going on.) Then I can decide if I want to know more about it or not…

I do prefer to read an actual newspaper over reading online though. If the paper does not give me enough information, then I will look it up online.

Wow a long comment about nothing… heehee

I avoid print papers unless there’s a particular article or set of articles that grabs me (maybe once every month or two). I’m much more apt to go online than purchase print copy to get news info.

Part of that is because if I’m interested in a story, I’m likely to look at news across several publications.

I’m not especially impressed with the media anymore, not that I ever was—it has gone from Carlyle’s fourth estate to a fifth column. Call me cynical but–CNN is shallow; its international version, “CNN International”, appropriately enough, doesn’t report anything interesting; the NY Times puts U.S. military lives in danger (a different conversation altogether); Fox news spouts the latest right-wing meme as if it is actual news; and BBC is much too much to the left. Makes one long for the simpler days of yellow journalism and Spanish-American wars…ah the good old days!

What really gets me though, and maybe it has always been there and I’m just now noticing it, is the cult of celebrity that grips people these days. Is my own life so painful, dull and/or uninteresting that I should join the masses and become obsessed with Brangelina and the results of its reproductive activity? Oprah Winfrey’s fawning, sickeningly sweet comments during the Pitt-Aniston break-up about how she hopes that Aniston is “taking it ok” made me want to be sick. Boo-fricking-hoo. Why should I care? It’s not all about money, but Aniston can cry herself to sleep on her imported down pillows and her silk sheets and then have her houseboy wipe her tears with hundred dollar bills while Brangelina pays some Namibian woman to go through labor for her (it); the rest of us will just have to just gut it out in the real world just as everybody else has done since the dawn of time.

Phew.

I hope you know though that I’m not really as cynical as this makes me out to be, well rereading it just now–maybe I need to reexamine that after all…