I’m an avid non-news person, with the rare exception when there is something actually relevant to me e.g. the impending gov’t shutdown, nearby crime, nearby fires, etc. Otherwise I’m not interested in the least; I just don’t wanna know.
Religiously but mainly via sites like The Hill.com. Roll Call, Politico and other wonky politics news sites. I’ve been reading a lot of Al Jazeera lately for news on Libya and the Middle East as well. I’ll pop by the Chicago Tribune’s site once a day or so for local events and browse Google’s news page.
I rarely, if ever, watch network/cable news.
Agreed. Network news isn’t.
On the other hand, news is what I do. I read everything I can every day. I would be astonished if anyone is more informed (on politics and elections) than I am.
Switching from reporter to politician has only increased this.
The Dope is my news. If I read about it here I then decide if it’s worth further investigation. I don’t know what that means in your poll. I read the dope religiously but only further pursue news stories on the rare occasions that I don’t learn everything I need to know here.
Religiously, but not TV. I hit 6 to 8 different news sites online several times a day, just to stay on top of things. During the summer I tend to fall out of touch, but once the debate season starts, I have to stay ahead of my debaters so I can answer questions and properly coach them.
Like the preceding poster, I come here for my news first. You people are scarily on the ball sometimes.
I listen to news talk radio every week day for four hours. Granted, there’s repetition of stories, but if something big has happened I know about it. And if nothing big has happened I get to find out over and over again about all the minor stuff going on.
Plus I read what grabs my attention at newspaper websites pretty much daily.
I read the paper every day. Washington Post. I don’t watch TV news nor feel compelled to click internet sites all day. But I read the paper pretty much cover to cover.
Your poll seems to be geared towards TV/Internet. Oh what a world we live in when actually *reading *the newspaper doesn’t even show up on the radar of possibilities!
Moved Cafe Society --> IMHO.
In between daily and religiously. I listen to, watch or read well more than just the evening news, but it isn’t on all the time either - apart from anything else, it’s hard to teach when your interactive board is showing BBC News 24.
Let me start out by saying that I worked for a number of TV stations in the 1970’s, and the News department was about the most worthless collection of stupidity assembled in one place. Still, that’s what brought in the money, which kind of says something about the audience. In the years since, my opinion has only gone downhill. CNN (I think they changed it to HLN, now) really summed it up when they realized people didn’t care about the actual news, just the headlines.
Even newspapers, which I regularly subscribed to throughout the 80’s, became the same-o boring stuff on a daily basis, which wasn’t so surprising when I realized that most of the stories come from the same couple of national news sources.
Now, with entertainment “news”, and talk show “news”, it’s even harder to separate political opinion and spin from any actual news. So now I get pieces from the TV set making noises when it’s on and happens to be the news, or listening to the radio when driving and hearing some news pieces, or picking up some news pieces from passing across various websites.
For over 10 years now, I haven’t bothered with the news, haven’t missed much of anything, and have been affected very little by it. It’s a lot like the weather; everybody talks about it, but nobody’s really doing anything about it. While it might have some effect on what I have to do, it doesn’t change the fact that I still have to do it.
“The entire human race was extinguished today at 3:12pm in a fiery, global nuclear explosion. Film at 11.”
I don’t seek out ‘news’ at all, so I chose the last option.
But somehow I am somewhat abreast of current events even though I don’t read the paper, listen to news radio, watch tv of my own volition, or read news websites.
I don’t have a choice, I work in the financial markets and I have to talk to clients all day long. I need to know the crisis of the week, regardless if I want to or not.
Not quite “religiously”, but I usually have my TV tuned to news when there’s nothing else on. I usually read my university’s crummy twice-weekly student newspaper, and often leaf through a crummy free daily newspaper on the train if I don’t have any higher-priority reading material on me. I don’t generally read a whole lot of articles online, except for times like during the federal election campaign we’ve got underway up here.
Like dalej42, it’s my job. I do enjoy it most of the time, but I think I would probably be a little less attentive to non-UK news if my work wasn’t what it is.
I love NPR because it’s a passive way to keep up with the news. If I had a commute I would probably consider the time in the car sufficient but I don’t. Usually I listen around making breakfast and dinner.
I vacillate between feeling like it’s important to stay informed to be a responsible voter and feeling like nothing I do makes a difference so why expose myself to the upsetting news.
also, the Dope is my news. I will often hear a news story and come here to see what Dopers are saying about it and frequently this is first place I hear about something.
Religiously, but rarely TV. Radio and internet are my favourite sources. The CBC is on and I visit multiple sites several times a day. I am quite please to have converted my mother to the wonder that is the internet (for news). She was really only using it for browsing. Now she is reading her paper online and watching news videos. I come from a family of news junkies.
NPR is about the only thing I listen to in the car, and I have a half-hour commute to work, so I listen to about four hours a week.
Constantly, but via a newspaper, several more online and two weekly news magazines. Seldom on TV. IIRC, the words spoken in a half-hour newscast would fill only two or three columns in a newspaper.
exactly this.
and my husband reads the newspaper and fills me in on local stuff of interest to him. (it’s very often not interesting to me, but he can’t help himself.)
I’m in law school and I just don’t have the time nor motivation to care about what’s going on. I pay attention to certain legal developments, but other than that I do some light reading of the NY Times.