I was listening to the BBC World Service on my walkman at work this evening, keeping up with latest events in the Middle East vis a vis the Israeli military operation in Lebanon.
My boss came wandering past, so in an effort to make some conversation I remarked that it was just as well we weren’t in Beirut at the moment.
“Why?” he asked.
“Because the Israelis are bombing the crap out of Lebanon, the Lebanese are firing Katyusha Rockets into Israel, and the whole thing has thoroughly gone pear shaped.”
“Oh. When did this happen?”
“Er, it started about four days ago…”
“Ah, well, I don’t really follow the news much” he said, and wandered off.
Turns out a lot of people here don’t follow the news, and people that do follow the news tend to get it from either one of the TV stations or a newspaper that’s been left in the staffroom.
Of course, for a balanced picture you need to get your news from more than one source.
I get my news from the BBC World Service, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Reuters, and SBS, as well either the Courier-Mail or the Sydney Morning Herald, depending what’s in the staffrooom (sometimes both, if I’m lucky!).
When school is in session, I check the online feeds for CNN and FOX every hour or so, as well as reading at least three newspapers (one local, one regional, one national[sup]1[/sup]) per day, and at least 7 news magazines[sup]2[/sup] a week. During summer vacation…not so much.
Riverside Press-Enterprise, Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal
The Economist, US News & World Report, Newsweek, BusinessWeek, Foreign Policy, Time, The Week
I read the Economist every week, and rely on The Onion and a couple fora here (GD and the pit, mostly) to point out other things that might be interesting.
I read the local news at one of the tv station’s websites every morning while drinking my coffee. I browse Yahoo! news for national/worldwide news several times a day.
MSNBC is virtually always on at my house, so I’ll stop and pay attention if I hear something interesting as I’m passing through the kitchen.
I have the Google News top headlines on my Google homepage, plus I’ll usually watch a half-hour or so of CNN. Other than that, it’s BBC News/Kentucky.com/whatever I get linked to.
I follow a lot of news, particularly business news. I listen to Bloomberg radio, BBC world service, and XM public radio on the way to work. At work, I check marketwatch.com, bloomberg.com, Cnn.com, and usually the New York Times, Boston Globe, LA Times, and the Dallas News online. I read the Wall Street Journal in print and the Sunday Dallas Morning News. I usually have Bloomberg TV or CNBC on during the day.
Generally CNN.com
my friend Bob and my other friend Brian are always filling me in, almost trying to “scoop” the news. They seem to get a bit of satisfaction from beating me to a story. I’m sure we all do to some extent though.
I have the NYT as my homepage, so everytime I fire up a browser window I see the latest headlines. After that, if I’m feeling newsy, I’ll hit google news, then maybe BBC news, and almost everyday, NewScientist. After that if I’m bored, maybe Sidney Morning Herald, Scotsman, Wired, Cnet.
As to the OP’s boss, I really don’t blame him for not knowing, and not caring what happened in Beirut/Palestine/Israel today. I gloss over that shit too. I’m over 40 years old. For as long as I can remember I’ve been updated on the Very Important News About What’s Going On In Israel & Palestine. Every night. My whole fricking life.
I really don’t care. Today Israelis died. Palestinians died. Bombs. Shootings. Israeli territories moved an inch. Palestinian territories moved an inch. More talks failed. More bombings. More shootings. Who cares? I’ve been hearing it every night for at least 30 years that I can remember. It’ll be on the nightly news for the next 100 years. zzzzzzzzzzzz.
I read the **Washington Post ** every day. Maybe not every single article, but I at least scan every page to see what I want to read in detail. It usually takes me 1.5 - 2 hours per day to get through it. Good for the commuter train or the elliptical trainer machine.
And that’s about it. I don’t watch TV news hardly at all, and I’m not one to click around internet news sites. I might catch **Fox News ** while on travel and the *Post * is not available locally.
I used to read the **Washington Times ** every day as well (I like its commentary selection better than the Post) but there are only so many hours in the day I can dedicate to newspaper reading. My bookshelf mocks me with the backlog of other reading I’d like to do but just don’t find the time.
The only magazine I read is the American Spectator, which is a monthly. Good for commentary.
I used to read at least one newspaper a day from the time I finished high school until sometime in the last few years. It only recently dawned on me that I don’t buy a paper any more. I went out at lunchtime and decided to have a sit down lunch. I didn’t have a book with me so I bought the paper to read and discovered that I had already read most of the important stuff on the net.
The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. I figure if I’m gonna have to filter for “spin” anyway, I might as well get a laugh or two out of it.
If I want to know more about something, I switch between CNN, MSNBC, CNBC and even (shudder) FOX for world events. For local stories, a local station repeats their latest broadcast on a cable channel endlessly. (I suppose I could just say “cable tv”, hunh?)
Google works well for finding links to newspaper accounts if I want more details.
I have what’s available on satellite radio, but don’t use it much.
More than once, I’ve become aware of something by reading about it here.
Somehow, I’m surprisingly well informed. (Or maybe just blissfully unaware.)
I get the local morning paper, The Arizona Republic, and If it’s a workday, I’m listening to NPR all day. Often I’ll read the next day a story that ‘broke’ while I was listening.
I read the local morning paper from front to back (except box scores and classifieds) pretty much every day. Mr. Legend reads me the top stories on CNN.com (in retaliation for my reading him the local stories from the paper, I believe), I watch the Daily Show (it counts!), sometimes CNN or MSNBC, catch the BBC news a few times a week, and I read the NY Times and the Washington Post online a couple of times a week. And, of course, I get most of my op/ed stuff from reading the SDMB.
